Music Week

Music: Current count 14861 [14850] rated (+11), 753 [757] unrated (-4).
Very little Jazz Prospecting or anything else. Unrated hasn't swelled
because I'm nowhere near up on my mail. Did get three CD cabinets built
this week, which should be good for approximately 3000 CDs -- net gain
is somewhat less as an old case was scrapped with parts reused for one
of the new ones. Should be in Detroit by this time next week, so I don't
expect anything much to change for a while.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #18, Part 7)

Two weeks and change into my big break from music writing, so Jazz
Prospecting is sparse this week, just barely topping my minimum catch
to bother posting any at all. I did manage to get some significant new
shelving built this past week, including three CD cases that should
hold close to 3000 CDs. Hopefully, the prospect of not feeling buried
will perk up my spirits.

Bracketed grades are tentative, which is more common these days
because I'm less able to focus. Bracketed dates are future release
dates, and may include notes about advances. In one case I streamed
a record from Rhapsody that I didn't receive and can only vouch
for in the most limited of ways. Such records should be tentative,
but since I don't have the prospect of inspecting them further,
I consider those grades final -- if I do get another shot at it,
I'll reopen the case. Didn't get my mail catalogued this week.
I'll catch up with it later.

The Suicide Kings (2008, Blue Plate Music): Country
rock group, formed in 2006, although the key players -- vocalist Bruce
Connole, keyboardist Brad Buxer -- have kicked around for a couple of
decades. Remind me of someone I can't quite pin down. Some grim moments,
which may or may not include the signature song. Some indications that
they're sharper politically than their niche demands.
B+(*)

Bobo Stenson Trio: Cantando (2007 [2008], ECM):
Piano trio, with Anders Jormin on bass, Jon Fält on drums. Stenson
has been around quite a while: b. 1944, co-led an early-1970s group
with Jan Garbarek that produced Witchi-Tai-To, one of my
favorite records. Has been recording regularly for ECM since 1998,
with a few more titles going back to 1971. A good fit for Manfred
Eicher's piano taste. Plays songs by Silvio Rodriguez, Alban Berg,
Astor Piazzolla, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, a couple others, one
group piece, two more by Jormin, who gets some space and comes off
surprisingly poignant.
[B+(***)]

Anthony Braxton/Milford Graves/William Parker: Beyond Quantum
(2008, Tzadik): Five pieces, named "First Meeting," "Second Meeting," etc.
The "Fourth Meeting" is the most immediately compelling -- probably just
the straightest and most accessible. Braxton plays "saxophones": alto is
his preferred tool, and he's one of the most dexterous and expansive alto
saxophonists ever, especially when he doesn't have to navigate his own
contorted compositions. He plays sopranino toward the end; probably others,
but he gets such a wide range of sound out of alto I could be wrong. Graves
is a little-recorded percussion legend, adding some vocalizing and other
strange effects here and there. Parker is a massively-recorded bass legend.
Much food for thought all around.
A- [Rhapsody]

Billy Harper: Blueprints of Jazz, Vol. 2 (2006
[2009], Talking House): Gospel-tinged tenor saxophonist, cut an
album back in 1975 that inspired the great Italian label Black
Saint. Hasn't recorded much lately -- mostly I've noticed him
popping up in various big bands. Has a thickly muscled tone, a
lot of depth and resonance and, well, soul -- few saxophonists
are as easy to pick out in a blindfold test. First two tracks
feature Amiri Baraka spoken word pieces. Only non-original is
"Amazing Grace." Haven't managed to listen straight through yet,
and there's plenty of time before the delayed official release
date. But it sure is great to hear Harper again, especially when
he really opens up.
[B+(***)] [Feb. 17]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for
high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he
tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session
ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged
with thousands of dollars in winnings.

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the
craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed
2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican
Party's evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was
betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian
Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who
represents that casino, according to three associates of
Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works
for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to
Mr. McCain's campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world's
second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's
current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not
just Mr. McCain's affection for gambling, but also the close
relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists
during his 25-year career in Congress.

I still remember when gambling was near the top of the list of
debilitating sins: to describe a person as a gambler was as damning
or worse than being a drunk or a junkie. This has changed over the
last few decades, mostly because the self-appointed guardians of
public virtue have converted to fetish of money and the thrill of
winning. The Republicans have led the way here. They've always had
a fine appreciation of money, and from Nixon on they've come to
believe that winning is the only thing that matters. As they've
become ever more unhinged from reality, they come to see no real
difference between running a successful business and a lucrative
gambling scam. After all, the difference can't be due to labor
actually producing something of value. As they've learned in their
MBA coursework, the only thing that matters is money, and one way
of making money is as good as any other.

McCain isn't alone in this, or even very rare, but he is typical.
One reason gamblers were held in such contempt back in my mother's
day is that gambling was invariably linked with deception, including
self-deception. McCain has had even more trouble with recognizing or
respecting truth than any politician in recent memory -- which is
to say, the Clinton-Bush era. Most people focus on the risk-taking
aspects of McCain's gambling habits, which are indeed scary given
how much power has been usurped by the presidency. But worse still
is the pathological link between gambling and dishonesty, not to
mention the self-absorption nearly every gambler indulges in. This
cluster of attitudes is what makes McCain so scary -- not that his
idiot conservative jingoism and his warmongering aren't bad enough.

Surge Report

Robert Dreyfuss: Reading Bob Woodward.
I still haven't been tempted to read any of Woodward's four Bush books,
but whatever they lack in critical consciousness they evidently make up
for in dish. Dreyfus writes:

Still, much of it is astonishing. And I don't just mean the juicy
tidbits that Woodward gives us -- that the United States spied on
Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, that a supersecret, high-tech
assassination program killed large numbers of militants beginning in
May, 2006, and so on. I'm talking about the dangerously sycophantic
advisers surrounding Bush, the ones who stroked the ego of a
know-nothing president as The Decider doubled-down on his failed war
in Iraq. And I'm talking about the machinations of a rogue general
named Jack Keane and his rump staff of strategists at the American
Enterprise Institute who worked with Steve Hadley, the national
security adviser, to promote the January, 2007, escalation called "the
surge." [ . . . ]

What Woodward unfolds, page after horrifying page, is the story of
how Hadley, Keane, John McCain, and the gang from AEI rode roughshod
over the widespread establishment opposition to the surge. Keane, in
particular, emerges as the principal advocate and facilitator of the
surge strategy and as a sneaky, back-channel operator working at the
behest of Dick Cheney's office and General
Petraeus. [ . . . ]

During 2006, Woodward makes clear, the overwhelming consensus, both
among the public and in Washington was to end the war, to start the
drawdown of U.S. forces. That was the belief of General George Casey,
the U.S. commander in Iraq, General John Abizaid, the CentCom
commander, and nearly all of the uniformed military. It was the view
of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, the State Department, and
members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. In 487 pages, Woodward
details how all of them were steamrolled. Consider this: had they not
been rolled over, today, two years later, the war would largely be
over.

The picture of Bush that emerges is not a flattering one. He is
portrayed as a man convinced of his utter righteousness. "Not one
doubt," says Bush. And: "We're killin' 'em. We're killin' 'em all."
Yet at the same time, Bush is blissfully detached, relying on Hadley
for everything. His decision to order the surge, taken in
November-December, 2006, was a tough one, Bush told Woodward. "Now,
this is a period of time where I've got, I don't how many, holiday
receptions."

Note the prominent role of McCain in promoting the surge. He, of
course, would be first in line to claim credit there. Dreyfus is right
that the main purpose of the surge was to stretch the war out at least
through the end of Bush's term. That's its real success: the quality
that allows Bush to wrap himself in commander-in-chief garb, thereby
preserving the slim following he gets from those who continue to rally
around the bloody flag.

Rhapsody Notes

Music Week

Music: Current count 14850 [14842] rated (+8), 757 [744] unrated (-13).
Spent whole week working on house, mostly playing old blues and country
records, picking up a few rateds from Rhapsody. Not enough jazz prospecting
to post. Next week will be more of the same. Didn't get much feedback on
Jazz Consumer Guide.

No Jazz Prospecting (CG #18)

Spent almost all of the week working on the house, trying to keep
things from collapsing, an ounce of prevention that Alan Greenspan
would have been well advised to consider 5 or 10 years ago. Didn't
bag the minimum jazz prospecting count I set last week when I set
out on this new tangent. Didn't even come close. In fact, mostly
played old blues records, which happened to be handy and seemed to
be helpful. One small accomplishment was building another CD case,
which I figure is good for nearly 1200 CDs. By the time I'm through,
we should have much more storage, although the long term resolution
is to learn to live within the new parameters.

Next three weeks should be little different from this last one,
at least as regards Jazz Prospecting, but maybe there'll be some
dribs and drabs to show.

Two Depressions

A quick postscript to yesterday's post, which was about how McCain
can't shake the party propaganda about how any/all government regulation
hurts the economic efficiency and freedom of the private sector. Actually,
this is Milton Friedman's propaganda, but it served Reagan well, at least
rhetorically, so it's become GOP gospel, even if it isn't honored in fact
any more than Jesus's chastisement of the rich and opposition to war.

If the current financial crisis prooves anything, it's that when times
get tough, virtually everyone in America looks to government for help:
not just the poor and downtrodden, but the rich as well. In fact, the
rich have the sort of contacts that let them cut to the head of the line.
This point is pretty obvious because it reeks of hypocrisy.

The less obvious point we should take from this crisis is that, much as
John Edwards noted their are two Americas, there are now two depressions.
The one in the news -- the one the Bush administration is so frantically
acting on -- is the depression of the rich. In 1929 it was a depression
of the rich that plunged the rest of the country into deep poverty, so
vague memory suggests that government action now will save us all a lot
of pain down the road. That may be true, but there's been a depression of
the poor in this country for several years now, and it's not just one of
those two-quarter blips in the business cycle that get the bean counters
hepped up. The depression of the poor is something the GOP has had little
trouble ignoring, not least because they're responsible for much of it.
The Democrats have also tended to ignore it, focusing on the money that
feeds practical politics, pointing to the myriad ways Bush has wrecked
the country for decades to come, and appealing to the increasingly fragile
middle class as the only visible, respectable representatives of the
numerically overwhelming non-rich.

The Democrats embrace of government as a system to deliver help to all
segments of the private sector and to provide responsible stewardship of
the economy and our (recently disastrous) path in foreign affairs is in
tune with what virtually all Americans actually believe and expect. Less
clear, of course, is whether they can actually do that, especially given
the corrupting influence of special interests, but at least they grasp
the principle. McCain and his ideologically pure advisers don't have a
clue, which is why their reactions are so kneejerk and their proposals
are little short of insane.

Oh, yes, the concluding point I wanted to make but didn't: I think
the rich and poor depressions are related. The old Keynesian view of
this is that depressions are caused by a shortage of demand, which can
be remedied by putting people to work -- even on make-work projects,
like World War II -- and thereby putting disposable cash into their
hands. What we've actually seen is the converse of this: workers have
been put on a long-term diet, gradually being starved, which sooner
or later has to suck the demand side out of the economy. This process
has been stretched out: by extracting more work for less pay, the
value of the work has kept the system going, and the missing cash
has been partly compensated by easier access to debt, at least until
recently. The debt, in turn, has escalated to the point where it has
become a giant house of cards: with relatively little labor to back
it up, the financial powerhouses of the rich and ultrarich have been
running on fumes, absorbed in a self-inflationary bubble that has
less and less to do with the real economy. I seriously doubt that
you can patch up the financial system without rebuilding the basic
foundation of the economy, which whether you like it or not still
depends on old-fashioned labor.

Browse Alert: McCain

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide
competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would
provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst
excesses of state-based regulation.

This is wrong on a nearly unfathomable number of levels. It assumes
innovation is per se a good thing, which is obviously not true, and in
the case of the financial industry of late is almost never true. Their
great mission in life has been to suck as much value out of the world
as possible, as is demonstrated by the mere fact that they've grown
faster and more profitably than the economy as a whole, despite the
fact that almost everything they used to do can be done vastly more
efficiently with modern information systems. One thing that is true
is that health insurance innovations will have the same purpose --
indeed, it strikes me as wrong to suggest that the health insurance
companies have lagged behind their financial sector brethren in
figuring out how to maximize their take while screwing customers.
Moreover, the consequences of this predation are if anything more
severe, as should be obvious if you contemplate the question they're
so adept at posing: your money or your life?

McCain's comment shows how deeply he himself has been suckered
into the party line, and how little capacity for independent or
critical thought he actually has.

Paul Woodward: Regulation vs. deregulation.
This contrasts a big chunk of an Obama speech to the simplistic idiocy
being spouted by McCain. It reminds me of a scene watching some TV
"journalist" hammer Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, demanding
details on how Obama would react to the current crisis. After several
references to a six-point proposal Obama had made, Goolsbee started
reciting them in quite some detail, and the interviewer cut him off
midway through number two. The lesson is clearly that the GOP talking
point will prevail even when its falsity is glaring.

Book Alert

Another batch of notes on new/recent books of possible interest.
I've been collecting these, and spitting them out in batches of 40.
Last one was Aug. 7. The whole batch are
here.

Tariq Ali: Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope
(revised/expanded, paperback, 2008, Verso): Originally published in
2006, focusing on Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, with Ecuador added
for this edition. I've been reluctant to pick this up -- I have a
lot of respect for Ali as a critic of American empire, but distrust
advocacy of politicians even when they build their careers on the
rejection of that same power. Still, the independence movements in
Latin America make for a remarkable story.

Tariq Ali: The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American
Power (2008, Scribner): This, on the other hand, is the book
I've been waiting for: Ali's home country, with the Musharraf regime
caught between ham-handed American power, popular rebellion of more
than one flavor, and its own peculiar interests. Was scheduled for
early 2008, but Benazir Bhutto's assassination sent Ali back to the
word processor. The situation is still volatile, impossible to keep
on top of. This should certainly help one catch up.
[On my to-be-read shelf.]

Robert D Auerbach: Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B
Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan's Bank (2008, University of
Texas Press): Gonzalez is a D-TX congressman who chaired the House
Financial Services Committee, one of the few politicians who ever
tried to exert any oversight on the Fed.

Phoebe Ayers/Charles Matthews/Ben Yates: How Wikipedia Works:
And How You Can Be a Part of It (paperback, 2008, No Starch
Press): Big (600 page) book on Wikipedia. We've been needing some
kind of book to provide an intro to the mechanics and conventions
of contributing. I've put a couple of little things in, but have
generally been inhibited. I bought John Broughton: Wikipedia:
The Missing Manual, but haven't read much yet. (Also Mark S
Choate: Professional Wikis, which is more about how to set
up your own MediaWiki-based site, which may be the hardcore way
to do it.)

Andrew J Bacevich, ed: The Long War: A New History of US
National Security Policy Since World War II (2007, Columbia
University Press): Academics only: 608 pages, list price $77.50.
Twelve essays, only a couple of people I've heard of, none other
than Bacevich I particularly respect.

Andrew J Bacevich: The Limits of Power: The End of American
Exceptionalism (2008, Metropolitan Books): Surprise bestseller.
Looks short, and may idolize Jimmy Carter more than is really decent,
but not a bad idea as a corrective. I think the key to the sales burst
has been the way Bacevich has avoided any partisan association with
the Democrats, who he correctly recognizes are a little too trigger
happy. (Come election time we'll have to balance that off against
McCain, who's easily the most trigger-happy presidential candidate
since James Polk, maybe ever.)
[On my to-be-read shelf.]

Dave Barry: Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)
(2007, Putnam): Very funny guy, at least once upon a time. Whether
that time includes the present, let alone the recent past, remains
to be seen. But his biggest problem is likely the material: much of
it is too weird to caricature, and too tragic to reduce to doo doo
jokes. Jon Stewart seems to be a better fit for the times. Barry was
fine back in the Reagan era when you weren't really sure you had to
take it all seriously.

Matthew Connelly: Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to
Control World Population (2008, Belknap Press): History
of the "underside" of the population control movement, especially
the tendency to frame such programs in racial terms. Before the
US right discovered the political utility of the "right to life"
issue, it tended to be the right who promoted population control
and the left who resisted them. I'm not sure where this book
lands.

Drew Curtis: It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries
to Pass Off Crap as News (2007, Gotham): Easy enough to make
that critique, but the main function of the book seems to be to
collect as much fark as possible, and its attraction is how readily
it digests all this crap that you may not otherwise bother to pay
any attention to.

Julian Darley: High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy
Crisis (paperback, 2004, Chelsea Green): It seems likely
that peak oil will be followed by problems in the supply of natural
gas, although the picture of how that will play out is less clear.
This is one of the few books that specifically addresses natural
gas.

Ross Douthat/Reihan Salam: Grand New Party: How Republicans
Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008,
Doubleday): A little cognitive dissonance here. It's not really
opposition to "the Democrats' cultural liberalism" that motivates
the Republican Party. It's greed. So while they get a kick out of
splitting the working class over cultural issues, the principle
they're really serious about is picking workers' pockets. Arguing
that Republicans should promote workers' economic interests goes
so hard against the grain as to be laughable. Of course, if workers
want to believe it, they'd be happy to hum a few bars. Just don't
expect it to pay off. (In fairness, Kevin Phillips started down
this line two decades ago. He never got it to work.)

Robert Engelman: More: Population, Nature, and What Women
Want (2008, Island Press): More people, or more for each
person? A book on population growth, and how women have throughout
history have sought to manage their fertility to optimize their
children's future.
[Found this in library but didn't finish it.]

Alvin S Felzenberg: The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We
Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game (2008,
Basic Books): An exercise in such parlor games as "who's the worst
president ever?" Breaks them down categorically rather than by
just picking them off in order, which makes it more work to use,
although possibly more useful to read.

Jonathan Fenby: Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great
Power, 1850 to the Present (2008, Ecco): Big, general history
of China since 1850, which doesn't seem like a particularly interesting
starting date -- sometime after the humiliation of the Opium Wars, if
memory serves. It does sort of fill a need, but with all the new books
on China coming out -- the Olympics may have something to do with it,
but it's ovedue anyway -- I expect it will take a while to sort out
which books are really worthwhile. Just as an indication, there's also
Rana Mitter: Modern China: A Very Short Introduction (paperback,
2008, Oxford University Press), which covers the same ground in 144
pages.

Robert Fisk: The Age of the Warrior: Selected Essays
(2008, Nation Books): Mostly short columns, 546 pages of them. Not
sure how far they go back, but the first section includes one called
"Be very afraid: Bush Productions is preparing to go into action."
Fisk has covered what he called The Great War for Civilisation
at least as far back as the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which
he chronicled in Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon.
The earlier book is absolutely essential. The later I bought but
still haven't found time for. This covers the same ground in small
bites, and carries forward -- toward the end is "Who killed Benazir?"

Thomas L Friedman: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a
Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America (2008,
Farrar Straus and Giroux): More garbled clichés from the New York
Times' village idiot. Looks like they copped the cover art from
Hieronymous Bosch, another faux pas. A skyline shot of Sao Paulo
would be much more effective.

Andrew Gelman: Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor
State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do (2008, Princeton
University Press): Examines why Democrats win in most relatively
wealthy states while Republicans win in most relatively poor states,
despite the fact that rich people overwhelmingly vote Republican,
and poor people primarily vote Democrat.

Aaron Glantz: Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness
Accounts of the Occupations (paperback, 2008, Haymarket Books):
Reports from US soldiers who took part in Iraq and Afghanistan, from
hearings held by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Glantz previously wrote
How America Lost Iraq, the first of several books on that theme.

Brian Hicks/Chris Nelder: Profit From the Peak: The End of
Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century (2008,
Wiley): I don't normally go for books that bill themselves as
investment guides, even if the occasion is a catastrophe, but is
nearly encyclopedic on the peak oil issue, and looks to be pretty
level headed. Haven't looked at it close enough to figure out what
that investment angle might be. Some of the books in this genre are:
Aric McBay: Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life After
Gridcrash; Mick Winter: Peak Oil Prep: Prepare for Peak Oil,
Climate Change and Economic Collapse; Stephen Leeb: The Coming
Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a
Barrell; Stephen Leeb: The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself and
Profit From the Coming Energy Crisis; George Orwel: Black Gold:
The New Frontier in Oil for Investors; more generally: Daniel A
Arnold: The Great Bust Ahead: The Greatest Depression in American
and UK History is Just Several Short Years Away/This is Your Concise
Reference Guide to Understanding Why and How Best to Survive It;
Peter D Schiff: Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic
Collapse; James Turk/John Rubino: The Collapse of the Dollar
and How to Profit from It: Make a Fortune by Investing in Gold and
Other Hard Assets; Addison Wiggin: The Demise of the
Dollar . . . : And Why It's Even Better for Your
Investments; Michael J Panzner: Financial Armageddon:
Protecting Your Future From Four Impending Catastrophes; Howard J
Ruff: How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years in the 21st
Century.
[Got and read this from library.]

Nathan Hodge/Sharon Weinberger: A Nuclear Family Vacation:
Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry (2008, Bloomsbury):
Another history-via-travel book, which includes stops in Pakistan,
Iran, India, China, North Korea, Israel, Russia, France, UK, as
well as numerous spots in the US. Weinberger previously wrote:
Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific
Underground.

Kaylene Johnson: Sarah: How a Small Town Girl Turned
Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear (paperback,
2008, Epicenter Press): Well, that was quick, even for a scant
159 pages, and no doubt obsolete by the time you read this.

Ishmael Jones: The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's
Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (2008, Encounter
Books): Evidently written by a long-time spook who never got
his higher-ups to understand anything he was telling them,
much less stuff they never found out about.

Sonali Kolhatkar/James Ingalls: Bleeding Afghanistan:
Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (paperback,
2006, Seven Stories Press): Co-directors of Afghan Women's Mission,
a US-based NGO working with RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women
of Afghanistan). They look to be ahead of the learning curve, but
Amazon reviews are very polarized.

Daniel J Levitin: The World in Six Songs: How the Musical
Brain Created Human Nature (2008, Dutton): Follow-up to the
author's This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human
Obsession, which I bought but haven't read. Six song classes:
friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, love.

Elvin T Lim: The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline
of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W Bush
(2008, Oxford University Press): Lots of things have declined, not
least intellectual integrity. Rhetoric, however, still seems to be
very much with us -- it's just grown emptier and more clichéd.

Mark London/Brian Kelly: The Last Forest: The Amazon in the
Age of Globalization (2007, Random House): Dispatches from
the world's largest tropical forest, fast disappearing as it's chewed
up to support the local and world economy.

Larry McMurtry: Books: A Memoir (2008, Simon &
Schuster): Memoirs of a small-town Texas bookseller, who writes
novels and movies on the side.

Karl E Meyer/Shareen Blair Brysac: Kingmakers: The Invention
of the Modern Middle East (2008, WW Norton): Authors of
Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire
in Central Asia, a 1999 book I bought back when it was still
an intellectual curiosity and never got around to reading. Another
sweeping history of (mostly English) imperial adventures in the
Middle East.

Mark Crispin Miller, ed: Loser Take All: Election Fraud
and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 (paperback,
2008, Ig): I haven't paid much attention to the various stolen
election arguments, which Miller has contributed much to, but
this at least is short and convenient and covers a bunch of
ground.

Michael Moore: Mike's Election Guide 2008
(paperback, 2008, Grand Central Publishing): A straightforward
book, but still feels weird. Moore is a mainstream celebrity,
but still is regarded as fringe political, so you never quite
know whether his endorsements of relatively mild-mannered
Democrats helps or hurts.

Retort: Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age
of War (paperback, 2005, Verso): San Francisco-based group,
attempts to explain post-9/11 history through the Situationist concept
of spectacle. As I recall, the theory's original attraction was its
ability to expand upon the ordinary. I'm not sure how that applies
here.

Eric Roston: The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has
Become Civilization's Greatest Threat (2008, Walker): A
biography of an element, from the origins of life to the threat
of global warming.

Michael Schwartz: War Without End: The Iraq War in Context
(paperback, 2008, Haymarket Books): Schwartz has written a number of posts
at TomDispatch, some of the most insightful analysis on Iraq around. In
particular, he was one of the first to point out the economic impact of
Bremer's early reforms, which on top of the initial bombing and looting
had disastrous effects on the Iraqi economy.

Nancy Soderberg/Brian Katulis: The Prosperity Agenda: What
the World Wants From America -- and What We Need in Return
(2008, Wiley): Soderberg held NSC and UN Ambassador posts in the
Clinton administration. Wrote a previous book, The Superpower
Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might, with foreword by
Clinton. Seems like an insider trying to think her way out of the
box. Obviously, being a superpower wasn't all it was cracked up
to be. Now can we negotiate?

Gary Stewart: Rumba on the River: A History of Popular Music
of the Two Congos (paperback, 2004, Verso): Saw this cited
in the liner notes to Tabu Ley Rochereau's The Voice of Lightness.
Not a lot of good books on African music, but this looks like it might
be very useful.

Allegra Stratton: Muhajababes (paperback, 2008,
Melville House): 25-year-old reporter tramps all across the Middle
East, talking to young women, collecting the stories she finds
into a book. Easy as that.

Charles Tripp: A History of Iraq (3rd edition,
paperback, 2007, Cambridge University Press): Could have been the
standard history when it came out in 2000. A lot has happened since
then, resulting in a second edition in 2002, and now this third
pass. Tripp also wrote Islam and the Moral Economy: The
Challenge of Capitalism (2006).

Phil Valentine: The Conservative's Handbook: Defining the
Right Position on Issues From A to Z (2008, Cumberland House):
Some kind of right-wing radio pundit. The A-to-Z approach to the
issues gives it a comprehensive air, and it's serious enough and
cogent enough -- most likely a combination of half truths and slick
posturing -- to tempt one to argue with it instead of dismissing
it out of hand. Bible-like binding strikes me as inconvenient and
pretentious.

Michael Waldman: A Return to Common Sense: Seven Bold Ways
to Revitalize Democracy (2008, Sourcebooks): FYI: End voter
registration as we know it; Fix electronic voting; Increase voter
turnout; Campaign finance reform; End partisan gerrymandering; End
the electoral college; Curb the imperial presidency and fix Congress.
Author used to write speeches for Clinton, where I'm sure he was
every bit as bold.

Bob W White: Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in
Mobutu's Zaire (paperback, 2008, Duke University Press):
Mobutu loved to see his people sing and dance. Kept them from paying
too much attention while he stole the country blind.

Jazz Consumer Guide

Jazz Consumer Guide is out in the
Village
Voice this week. Title is "Festival Visions": I came up with that
when I noticed a relatively large number of records associated with
William Parker's Vision Festival. Actually, had I thought of it sooner,
I could have rounded up a couple more. AUM Fidelity has an inside track
on these records. They probably have the best placement percentage of
any label over Jazz CG history. Some other labels, like ECM, have had
more records listed, but they release many more. In addition to the
avant-garde, a couple of trad jazz records made the cut.

I haven't seen the print edition, but one thing new this time is
that I decided to run several honorable mentions on the web page that
I offered up as cuts for the print edition: Tom Teasley, Vince Seneri,
Ernest Dawkins, and Rocco John Iacovone. These were toward the bottom
of the list, and had been cut at least once previously. Running them
this way at least gets them out. Otherwise, I was afraid that I would
never get them out. One result was that the cuts were concentrated in
the main section:

Steven Bernstein: Diaspora Suite (Tzadik)

Mike Ellis: Bahia Band (Alpha Pocket)

Scott Fields Freetet: Bitter Love Songs (Clean Feed)

Vandermark 5: Beat Reader (Atavistic)

These are all A- records, and should run next time. For the record,
the top six on my honorable mention list are also A- rated. I didn't
feel like getting into a lot of detail on them, and I figured they'd
be better served now than stuck in the waiting queue. Good records; a
wide range of styles and interests. Don't have enough space often
enough, so I try to make do. A lot more in the pipeline. In fact, I
have very nearly enough written for the next column.

Publicist's letter:

The Village Voice has published my 17th Jazz Consumer Guide column this
week: Festival Visions:
link
Note that there is also a second web page.
Pick Hits:
William Parker: Double Sunrise Over Neptune (AUM Fidelity)
Rob Brown Ensemble: Crown Trunk Root Funk (AUM Fidelity)
Bloodcount: Seconds (Screwgun)
The Roy Campbell Ensemble: Akhenaten Suite (AUM Fidelity)
Ted Des Plantes' Washboard Wizards: Thumpin' and Bumpin' (Stomp Off)
Brent Jensen: One More Mile (Origin)
Alex Kontorovich: Deep Minor (Chamsa)
Myra Melford/Mark Dresser/Matt Wilson: Big Picture (Cryptogramophone)
Nublu Orchestra: Conducted by Butch Morris (Nublu)
Slow Poke: At Home (Palmetto)
Mike Walbridge's Chicago Footwarmers: Crazy Rhythm (Delmark)
Honorable Mentions:
The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet: Music From Guys and Dolls (Arbors)
Grupo Los Santos: Lo Que Somos Lo Que Sea (Deep Tone)
Dick Hyman/Chris Hopkins: Teddy Wilson in 4 Hands (Victoria)
Mary Lou Williams: A Grand Night for Swinging (High Note)
Paul Shapiro's Ribs and Brisket Revue: Essen (Tzadik)
Ari Roland: And So I Lived in Old New York . . . (Smalls)
Marilyn Mazur/Jan Garbarek: Elixir (ECM)
Steve Lehman Quintet: On Meaning (Pi)
Giacomo Gates: Luminosity (Doubledave Music)
Sal Mosca Quartet: You Go to My Head (Blue Jack Jazz)
Adam Kolker: Flag Day (Sunnyside)
Stacey Kent: Breakfast on the Morning Tram (Blue Note)
James Carter: Present Tense (Emarcy)
The Jack & Jim Show Presents: Hearing Is Believing (Boxholder)
Harry Allen: Hits by Brits (Challenge)
Jason Kao Hwang/Edge: Stories Before Within (Innova)
Tom Teasley: Painting Time (T&T Music)
Brad Leali Jazz Orchestra: Maria Juanez (TCB)
The Joe Locke Quartet: Sticks and Strings (Jazz Eyes)
Vince Seneri: The Prince's Groove (Prince V)
Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble: The Messenger: Live at the
Original Velvet Lounge (Delmark)
Rob Brown Trio: Sounds (Clean Feed)
Marty Ehrlich & Myra Melford: Spark! (Palmetto)
The Rocco John Group: Don't Wait Too Long (COCA Productions)
Duds:
Maria Schneider Orchestra: Sky Blue (ArtistShare)
Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble: Black Unstoppable (Delmark)
Christian Scott: Anthem (Concord)
Note that some HMs are on the website but not in print edition; should
be Teasley, Seneri, Dawkins, Rocco John, but I haven't seen the print
edition.
The Jazz Prospecting list for this cycle covered 291 records:
link
This is more than usual, the result of a four month gap since my
last column on May 13. Summer for us has been disrupted several
times, especially by the death of my father-in-law, Kalman Tillem,
who at 92 remembered Louis Armstrong not as trad but as jazz. The
next column should be out sooner, but I am and will be distracted
by other work over the next month, so it's hard to predict.
I appreciate your support in making this column possible. Despite
not appearing more frequently, we do manage to cover a lot of new
jazz, and never fail to find unique items of exceptional interest.
Thanks.

Jazz CG (17) Notes: Print

The following records actually appeared in Jazz CG (17):

Harry Allen: Hits by Brits (2006 [2007], Challenge):
The songbook doesn't cramp a single disc --
"Cherokee," "These Foolish Things," "You're Blasé," "A
Nightingale in Berkeley Square," "The Very Thought of You"
are the five most obvious of ten -- and Allen is in his
usual form in high gear and in low. But the second horn,
John Allred's trombone, does slow him down a bit, and
the contrast is a mixed blessing. Sidekick guitarist Joe
Cohn is also on hand, as are bassist Joel Forbes and
drummer Chuck Riggs.
B+(***)

The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet: Music From Guys and
Dolls (2007, Arbors):
I'd like this better, at least
would have gotten to like this quicker, if I liked Frank
Loesser's Guys and Dolls in the first place, but the
few times I've heard it I've found much to resist. I'm still
not much impressed with Eddie Erickson's half of the vocals,
but I'm fine with Rebecca Kilgore, and she gets the sharper
lines and the catchier melodies. Still, no vocal compares
to how sublime Allen sounds, and guitarist Cohn seems to be
getting better each time out, carrying the soft spots that
hold the narrative together.
A-

Bloodcount: Seconds (1997 [2007], Screwgun, 2CD+DVD):
This is Tim Berne's mid/late-1990s group, a quartet with Jim Black
(drums), Michael Formanek (bass), Chris Speed (tenor sax, clarinet),
and Berne (alto sax, baritone sax). With Marc Ducret on guitar, the
group recorded three CDs of Paris Concerts in 1994, which is
the subject of Süsanna Schonberg's Eyenoises . . . The Paris
Movie, packed in here on the DVD. The film doesn't offer much
visually: black and white, tight close ups, cut between practice
and concert not that it's always easy to tell, with some ambling
about town here and there. Musically, it seems to pull a single
piece together through multiple iterations. Watching Black, you
get the sense of the rhythm working its way through his whole body.
Ducret can be a potent force but he mostly holds back, and he isn't
missed much on the live sets documented on the CDs. The reason is
the interlocking reeds. Most two-horn free quartets use trumpet
and sax not just for contrast but to set each loose on its own
trajectory. Pairing two reeds -- most often alto/tenor sax, with
tenor/baritone sax and clarinet/alto sax the other options --
poses a tougher challenge. Here the similar tones slip in and out
of phase, never falling far apart. The result is free rhythmically,
lose melodically, but tight harmonically. Although the two discs
only repeat one song, the form is so dominant that effectively
they are multiple views of the same thing. That may seem like too
much, but I find the redundancies to be fascinating. [FYI, Berne's
been down this road before, releasing a 3-CD live set from 1996,
Unwound, which I haven't heard but should be much more of
the same sort -- according to Penguin Guide, "raw, immediate and
proudly unproduced."]
A-

Rob Brown Trio: Sounds (2006 [2007], Clean Feed):
Actually, not sure of the date: notes say it was recorded on
November 23, but don't bother with the year. The title piece
debuted at the 2005 Vision Festival, so 2005 is also possible.
Brown's an alto saxophonist I've mostly encountered on William
Parker albums. He has everything you'd want in that role, but
has had trouble establishing himself on his own. It's hard to
find fault with this: he breaks the usual sax-bass-drums trio
format with Daniel Levin's cello and Satoshi Takeishi's taiko
drums and percussion; he varies the free jazz mix with a ballad
and a Tibetan folk song. It's almost a tour de force, but not
quite, lacking something you can't prescribe until it hits you.
B+(**)

Rob Brown Ensemble: Crown Trunk Root Funk (2007
[2008], AUM Fidelity):
Born 1962 in Virginia, based in New York,
plays alto sax, mostly in William Parker projects like the Little
Huey Orchestra, In Order to Survive, and the extraordinary Quartet
behind O'Neal's Porch and Sound Unity, expanded to
Raining on the Moon and expanded again. He's been building
up a catalog under his own name, now up to 19 titles, mostly duos
or trios on very small labels. He plays fast and fierce, thrilling
when it all comes together. This group was assembled for a Vision
Festival show, then reconvened in the studio, where they play 7
Brown originals. Craig Taborn (piano, electronics), William Parker
(bass), Gerald Cleaver (drums) -- terrific rhythm section, they
keep Brown flying all through the session, or soaring gracefully
on the rare spots when they slow down a bit.
A-

The Roy Campbell Ensemble: Akhenaten Suite (2007 [2008],
AUM Fidelity):
The only time I tempted to visit New York
for live jazz is when the Vision Festival is on. For several years
I was seeing very selective compilations from the concert series.
Lately we're starting to see more full concerts, such as this one,
subtitled Live at Vision Festival XII. Campbell plays
trumpet and its relatives, and picks up something called an
arguhl (a two-tube "clarinet") to flavor his Egyptian themes --
beyond the title suite, he plays "Pharoah's Revenge" and "Sunset
on the Nile." Born 1952 in Los Angeles, moved east in the late
1970s, joining Jemeel Moondoc's Muntu Ensemble, hooking up with
various William Parker projects, including Other Dimensions in
Music. This is Campbell's 7th album since 1991 under his own
name, but there are more albums with him in a leading role,
and lots more joining in. Group here includes Bryan Carrott on
vibes, Hilliard Greene on bass, Zen Matsuura on drums, and
Billy Bang on violin. Bang makes the difference, his natural
swing propelling the album as unstoppably as the Nile, but
the vibraharp accents kick it off in surprising directions.
A-

James Carter: Present Tense (2007 [2008], Emarcy):
This record has been fairly well received, as well it should be.
Carter is a remarkable talent, and any time you bother to pay him
some attention is likely to be rewarded. Still, I can't tell you
how many times I've played this record and not bothered to listen.
With its Django Reinhardt and Gigi Gryce covers, quietstorm and
hot club originals, it sounds like a pastiche of his past work.
It does reassure me that his baritone rep isn't unfounded, but
I still suspect he's playing a lot of the low stuff on tenor. He
adds some flute here, which isn't bad but has opportunity costs.
Pianist DD Jackson offers notable support, but doesn't get enough
time either. Rodney Jones has some moments on guitar. I'm less
impressed with trumpeter Dwight Adams, who riffs energetically
but adds little.
B+(***)

Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble: The Messenger:
Live at the Original Velvet Lounge (2005 [2006], Delmark):
This is Chicago's answer to a traditional New Orleans tailgate
party, with Maurice Brown's trumpet to shine up Dawk's sax, and
Steve Berry's trombone to get it dirty again. No one is credited
with vocals, but that doesn't stop the shouts, hollers, whelps
and raps, let alone the patter.
B+(***)

Ted Des Plantes' Washboard Wizards: Thumpin' and Bumpin'
(2006 [2007], Stomp Off):
Des Plantes is a pianist who plays stride and
knows his Jelly Roll Morton. He has five albums on Stomp Off, a few more
on Jazzology, going back at least to 1991. I can find very little info
on the web, but turned up a photo with Dave Greer's Classic Jazz
Stompers ("a territory band from Dayton, Ohio") showing a guy with a
mustache and a deficit of mostly gray hair. Also found quotes from a
couple of reviews he wrote for The Mississippi Rag (as in
ragtime). I've heard one previous Washboard Wizards album, Ohio
River Blues (1994, Stomp Off). This is a little more modern than
the Yerba Buena Stompers albums, at least in two respects: the song
focus is Harlem 1924-37, so it swings more, and Des Plantes wrote
two new songs to slip in with the old ones. But the band lineup is
similar, with banjo and tuba, and four players in common: Leon
Oakley (trumpet there, cornet here), Hal Smith (drums, also washboard
here), Clint Baker (tuba there, trombone here), and John Gill (banjo).
The main difference is replacing the second trumpet with an alto sax --
again, a post-Oliver New York move. Five (of 17) vocal tracks: four by
Des Plantes, one by Gill. Des Plantes is the more engaging vocalist,
and the dollop of sax and dash of swing give this a slight edge.
A-

Marty Ehrlich & Myra Melford: Spark! (2007, Palmetto):
Deceptively calm sax-piano duets from two musicians
used to playing on the edge, but not so calm they slip into the
background. Not sure what the idea behind the title was, but by
removing all the tinder their spark never gets engulfed in fire.
B+(**)

Giacomo Gates: Luminosity (2007 [2008],
Doubledave Music, CD+DVD):
Finally, a male jazz singer in "the Eddie
Jefferson/Jon Hendricks tradition" I actually enjoy. He talks
his way offhandedly into introductions, then slips effortlessly
into song. Pulls a couple of gems out like "Hungry Man," and
wrote one himself ("Full of Myself" -- of course, he couldn't
be). Would even be better if he didn't keep working his way
into those vocalese jams, but at least he keeps his cool.
Can't say that for any of his obvious competition.
B+(***)

Grupo Los Santos: Lo Que Somos Lo Que Sea (2007, Deep Tone):
A New York quartet not obviously connected to Cuban,
let alone Brazilian, music, either by name or instrument: Paul
Carlon on tenor sax, Pete Smith on guitar, David Ambrosio on bass,
William "Beaver" Bausch on drums. I've been playing this opposite
Cachao for, well, a ridiculous number of times, and it's lacking
the extra percussion, the choruses, and Chocolate Armenteros'
trumpet from the classic stuff, but it holds up awfully well.
I've been impressed by Carlon before, but Smith is a revelation,
and not just on the two Brazilian pieces (a choro and a samba).
Bausch writes about half of the pieces, and may have more up
his sleeve than is obvious. There is a bit of extra percussion
on two tracks, which credit Max Pollak with "Rumba Tap" -- I
think that's tap dancing to a rumba beat. Sounds like it,
anyway.
A-

Dick Hyman/Chris Hopkins: Teddy Wilson in 4 Hands
(2006 [2007], Victoria):
Hyman's been around forever, but while
most jazz musicians try to establish their own sound, he's a
scholar and a chameleon, the guy you'd go to if you wanted to
sound just like any stride pianist you can name. The notes here
say that he's soon coming out with "an encyclopedic CD-ROM"
called Dick Hyman's 100 Years of Jazz Piano. He's the
obvious choice to do it all. Also mentions that he has three
duo-piano albums with Ray Kennedy, Bernd Lhotzky, and Chris
Hopkins. The only one I've heard is the one Hopkins sent me.
Hopkins was born in 1972 in Princeton, NJ, but grew up and
lives in Germany (Bochum, near Düsseldorf; American father,
German mother). Another swing kid, he cites a stellar list of
influences from James P. Johnson to Johnny Guarnieri (Waller,
Smith, Basie, Stacy, Hines, Wilson, "many others"; Ellington
must be among the latter, but I don't hear much that reminds
me of Tatum). Five cuts are solos, twelve duets. Normally I
react to solo piano as too sparse, and to duo piano as too
much of too sparse, but these pieces are utterly charming.
The secret, of course, is Wilson. I wonder how many younger
jazz fans even recognize the name compared to other names on
the influences list. Part of the problem is that a big chunk
of Wilson's discography is now routinely reissued under his
singer's name, Billie Holiday, but his trios and solos have
lapsed into obscurity as well. This record brings Wilson's
abundant charms back into focus.
A-

The Jack & Jim Show Presents: Hearing Is Believing
(2005 [2007], Boxholder):
First, I have to admit that I had never
heard of Jimmy Carl Black. Turns out that he was best known for being
in my least favorite band of the twentieth century, the Mothers of
Invention, usually filed under the bandleader's name, Frank Zappa,
but his website discography totals 77 albums without getting past
2002. Black played drums, and introduced himself as "the Indian of
the group." Later he had a band called Geronimo Black. Anyhow, he's
the Jim. Jack must be guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, who I have heard
of and rarely heard -- his website discography claims 180 records,
so I haven't heard much. Together since 1995 as the Jack & Jim
Show they have 8 previous albums. Might as well list them to get
a whiff: Locked in a Dutch Coffeeshop, Pachuco Cadaver,
Uncle Jimmy's Master Plan, The Early Years, The
Perfect C&W Duo's Tribute to Jesse Helms, The Taste of
the Leftovers, 2001: A Spaced Odyssey, Reflections
and Experiences of Jimi Hendrix. They do a mix of deconstructed
parodies (including three Beatles songs; one each from Marvin Gaye,
Tim Hardin, and Dizzy Gillespie) and perverse protest songs ("Cheney's
Hunting Ducks" is a choice cut, "Girl From Al-Qaeda" is abducted and
held hostage from Jobim and Getz). Chadbourne plays some extreme
skronk guitar, and Oxford avant-gardist Pat Thomas slums with some
amusing keyboards. Title parses as: you won't believe this until
you hear it.
B+(***)

Brent Jensen: One More Mile (2006 [2007], Origin):
Thanks to Origin Records, Seattle has one of the better documented
regional jazz scenes. Their house rhythm section -- Bill Anschell
on piano, Jeff Johnson on bass, John Bishop on drums -- is flexible
and dependable, but that's usually as far as it goes. Jensen isn't
even Seattle. He teaches woodwinds in Idaho, and doesn't write much,
but he has a distinctive tone and rigorous logic on soprano sax.
Studied under Lee Konitz, which probably has something to do with
it.
A-

Stacey Kent: Breakfast on the Morning Tram (2007, Blue Note):
An art singer, or perhaps a pop singer in an alternate
universe, which may be the England and France that adopted this
New Jersey native. Doesn't write, but four songs are originals,
written by husband-saxophonist Jim Tomlinson and novelist Kazuo
Ishiguro, an often impressive combination. The title track is a
richly detailed recipe for putting heartbreak aside. She has an
interesting knack for repertoire, taking "Hard Hearted Hannah"
and "What a Wonderful World" slow enough to reveal details you
missed before. Three songs in French: a samba and two by Serge
Gainsbourg.
B+(***)

Adam Kolker: Flag Day (2007 [2008], Sunnyside):
Very pleasing, easily listenable sax quartet, where three notable
sidemen each have something distinctive to add: John Abercrombie
on guitar, John Hebert on bass, Paul Motian on drums. Mellow sax,
subtle surprises.
B+(***)

Alex Kontorovich: Deep Minor (2006 [2007], Chamsa):
Some more biographical notes: born 1980, in Russia, don't know
where, or when he came to US -- no later than 1999, although he
was a research fellow in Israel 2000-02. Got his Ph.D. in math
at Columbia 2007, and now teaches at Brown in Rhode Island.
Research interests include analytic number theory, stochastic
processes, and game theory -- studied the latter at Princeton
with John Nash, better known as A Beautiful Mind. Plays
clarinet and alto sax, mostly in klezmer groups, some with ska
angles -- The Klez Dispensers, KlezSka, Frank London's Klezmer
Brass Alltars, Aaron Alexander's Midrash Mish Mosh, King Django's
Roots and Culture Band. Also reports playing with the Klezmatics
and Boban Markovic. This is a jazz quartet with a lot of klezmer
input, but he also offers "Waltz for Piazzolla," "New Orleans
Funeral March," and "Transit Strike Blues," and rolls up a bit
of infectious fusion called "AfroJewban Suite." Brandon Seabrook
sets most of these pieces up with guitar, banjo, and tapes.
A-

Brad Leali Jazz Orchestra: Maria Juanez (2004 [2007],
TCB):
An alto saxophonist, Leali came up through Count Basie's ghost
orchestra, and does them one better in this crisp, vibrant, and above
all loud outing. Not as Latin as the title cut suggests, nor as
consistently clever as a marvelous "Pink Panther" promises, but
able to push the old blues formula into ever higher energy orbits.
Atomic, indeed.
B+(***)

Steve Lehman Quintet: On Meaning (2007, Pi):
First artist website I've bumped into since I got rid of Flash
that has zero non-Flash info. Life without Flash has been swell:
no browser hangs or crashes since I removed the plug-in. What
brought this on was that AMG was serving Flash-based ads that
wrecked my browser. But even benign ads can achieve high levels
of annoyance when implemented in Flash. Glad to be rid of it.
Lehman's not unfamiliar. Plays alto sax, which he studied under
Jackie McLean and Anthony Braxton. This is his 5th or 6th album.
First I heard was Artificial Light, a quintet I didn't
care for, and probably missed a lot in. Next was Demian as
Posthuman, a mix of smaller groups including duos which were
simple enough to give his abstractions recognizable shape. This
one is a quintet again, with Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Chris
Dingman on vibes, Drew Gress on bass, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums.
Hype sheet says: "Each of On Meaning's eight compositions
addresses the challenge of creating fresh environments for modern
vision of compositional form, harmony, rhythm, and orchestration"
and describes Lehman's sax as "combining a highly advanced harmonic
language, microtonal playing, extended techniques, and a deeply
rooted rhythmic sense." I don't know what most of that means, but
I do hear it in the music, especially the rhythmic sense, which
gives his complex abstractions a jingle-jangle quality. Sorey
continues to impress, too.
B+(***)

The Joe Locke Quartet: Sticks and Strings (2007, Jazz Eyes):
Even handed: Locke's vibes and Joe
La Barbera's drums count as sticks; Jay Anderson's bass
and Jonathan Kreisberg's guitar provide the strings.
Kreisberg is very appealing here, both on acoustic and
electric, and the contrast to the vibes works nicely.
B+(***)

Marilyn Mazur/Jan Garbarek: Elixir (2005 [2008], ECM):
Many short pieces framed by unusual percussion -- Mazur's
kit reads: marimba, bowed vibraphone and waterphone, hang, bells,
gongs, cymbals, magic drum, log drum, sheep bells, Indian cowbells,
udu drum, various drums and metal-utensils. Most are interesting,
and the metallic bits are especially striking. Garbarek is a
sensitive duettist, skillfully working his tenor and soprano
sax, and flute, around Mazur's contours, and at his best is as
hypnotic as a snake charmer.
A-

Myra Melford/Mark Dresser/Matt Wilson [Trio M]: Big
Picture (2006 [2007], Cryptogramophone):
Taking a clue
from first names, they call themselves Trio M, but are established
enough to keep their names on the spine. I figure the complex
cerebral stuff is pianist Melford's and credit the bouncy bits
to drummer Wilson. There's no doubt that the weird arco bass
is Dresser's. He has a huge reputation, but rarely makes albums
you can kick back and enjoy. This is the exception.
A-

Sal Mosca Quartet: You Go to My Head (2001-06 [2008],
Blue Jack Jazz):
Private recording sessions from the
late pianist's studio, the sort of thing that becomes precious
only after we know the supply is limited. Mosca was a Lennie
Tristano disciple, and tenor saxophonist Jimmy Halperin is an
adroit stand-in for Warne Marsh or Lee Konitz (each author of
a song here). But the Gershwin pieces and "How High the Moon"
are standard fare for any jazzman with a little stride in his
swing, and the Parker and Gillespie pieces are almost as time
worn. Still, a lovely piece of work.
B+(***)

Nublu Orchestra: Conducted by Butch Morris (2006
[2007], Nublu):
Morris's registered trademark (Conduction®) still sounds like mumbo
jumbo on paper, but he does have an uncanny knack for keeping large
groups creative and clutter-free -- nowhere more so than with this
Avenue C house band, with beats and vocals from underworld refugees
(Love Trio, Forro in the Dark, Brazilian Girls) and horns from
downtown jazzbos.
A-

William Parker: Double Sunrise Over Neptune (2007
[2008], AUM Fidelity):
Recorded live at Vision Festival XII, three
long pieces built around repeated bass riffs that the conductor
farmed out to Shayna Dulberger, and a short bridge. With sixteen
musicians, favoring strings (two violins, viola, cello, bass,
guitar or banjo, oud, the leader's doson'ngoni) which elaborate
the themes over horns (trumpet, three saxes, whatever "double
reeds" Bill Cole plays), with vocalist Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
trading off against the latter. Oh, also two drummers, Gerald
Cleaver and Hamid Drake. Whereas Parker's large groups in the
past, like his Little Huey Orchestra, tended to go unhinged,
this all flows together marvelously. Even a bit of wildness near
the end of the second piece, which seems inevitable once you
unleash saxophonists Rob Brown and Sabir Mateen, holds tight.
The singer runs close to the edge of the high-pitched squeak
that east (or southeast) Asian opera is prone to, but never
slips over. A remarkable piece of work.
A

The Rocco John Group: Don't Wait Too Long (2007,
COCA Productions):
Cut his teeth in the '70s lofts with
Sam Rivers, an influence on alto saxophonist Rocco John Iacovone,
then waited plenty long, including a stretch in Alaska, before
returning to find young trumpeter Michael Irwin and find that
the two horn, bass and drums quartet is the optimal free jazz
vehicle.
B+(**)

Ari Roland: And So I Lived in Old New York . . .
(2007, Smalls):
A matching bookend to Chris Byars' Photos in
Black, White and Gray, as it should be, given that the quartets
are the same (except for the drummers, Andy Watson instead of Phil
Stewart) and the two writers have long worked in the same milieu.
More bass solos here.
A-

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Sky Blue (2007, ArtistShare):
I reckon my continuing indifference to Schneider's highly refined art
is subliminal. She doesn't set off the gag reflex that I have long
had to highly orchestrated classical music, but that's what I suspect
is lurking, somewhere near the chronic level of an allergen. Clearly,
jazz fans who also like euroclassical simply adore her -- it's not
common for a self-released, no-retail-distribution record like her
Concert in the Garden to win a Grammy. Still, for every time
a nicely orchestrated motif catches my fancy, three or four fall off
my ears leaving nothing. The band is full of well-regarded musicians --
over the last couple of years membership has been a plum on everyone's
resume. The packaging has been padded out with pictures and notes in
two booklets -- a feast if you're interested. I think it's good that
she can record like this. Figuring my disinterest to have mostly been
my problem, I was reluctant to saddle Concert as a dud, until
it won that Grammy and I didn't have any response to my editor as to
why it wasn't a dud. This one is no different, at least insofar as I
care to tell.
B

Christian Scott: Anthem (2007, Concord):
This
does lighten up a bit in an agreeable piece called "Like That,"
but the first half-plus is buried in heavy sludge -- an obvious
metaphor for flooded New Orleans, the young trumpeter's home
town.
B-

Vince Seneri: The Prince's Groove (2007 [2008], Prince V):
Seneri not only plays the Hammond B3 Organ, he sells
them through a company called Hammond Organ World. He puts on
a good demo, too, with first rate guest stars -- Dave Valentin
takes the fast latin pieces on flute, Randy Brecker splatters
his trumpet on the funky ones. The only time the groove lets up
is the obligatory sax ballad, which Houston Person aces.
B+(***)

Paul Shapiro: Essen (2007-08 [2008], Tzadik):
Group's full name: Paul Shapiro's Ribs and Brisket Revue. Shapiro
plays sax and clarinet and sings, although probably less than
Cilla Owens and Babi Floyd, who take on all ten songs. Lots of
Yiddish, titles like "Tzouris" and "Oy Veys Mir" and the new
title piece (with guests Steven Bernstein, Frank London, and
Doug Wieselman). Sophie Tucker revivalism. And two Slim Gaillard
songs, just to show you how far over the top they're willing to
go.
A-

Slow Poke: At Home (1998 [2007], Palmetto):
Recorded by Lounge Lizards/Sex Mob bassist Tony Scherr at home
in Brooklyn, laid back blues for sophisticates with no reason
to be blue. Slide guitarist Dave Tronzo stretches out melodies
by Duke Ellington and Neil Young, and saxophonist Michael Blake
sails effortlessly along.
A-

Tom Teasley: Painting Time (2007, T&T Music):
One thing that has changed in jazz, and probably in all other art
forms, is that way back when way back when musicians sought to
develop distinctive trademark sounds, whereas many now are happy
to sound a little bit like lots of people. This has something to
do with postmodernism, in particular the idea that we've run out
of new ideas so the best we can do now is to recycle old ones.
But some of it's just education: musicians grow up knowing much
more about the music that came before them so they inevitably
find themselves working within those traditions. Economics may
even select for such education -- it's certainly the case that
many jazz musicians stress their teaching and it's evidently a
big part of their incomes. Teasley is a drummer/educator who
doesn't sound like anyone in particular but does a good job of
synthesizing beats from everywhere, producing sinuous, enticing
rhythms, which he then dresses up with various horns, including
a healthy dose of trombone. I suppose if I attended his class
he'd point out the bits from Africa, India, Brazil, the Middle
East, and so forth, not to mention the "searing bop-informed
flute solo" that somehow slipped by me. Still, it seems to me
that something this catchy should be pop jazz, but isn't because
it's deemed excessively knowledgeable.
B+(***)

Mike Walbridge's Chicago Footwarmers: Crazy Rhythm
(1966-2007 [2007], Delmark):
Born 1937 in Los Angeles, Walbridge
moved from trumpet to sousaphone in his high school band, moved
to Chicago after a stint in the military, joined the Original Salty
Dogs, and founded the Chicago Footwarmers Hot Dance Orchestra in
1958, playing tuba. That trad jazz never changes is proven by the
near-seamless pairing of a 1966-67 9-track LP with 8 new tracks
from 40 years later. What holds it together is fellow Salty Dog
Kim Cusack, who plays clarinet and alto sax on both sessions. He
goes back even further, recording most frequently with James
Dapogny, Ernie Carson, and Bob Schulz, although he also has a
nice 1967-2007 pair of credits with Jim Kweskin and Maria Muldaur.
While the 1967 sessions have extra piano, the most distinctly
satisfying thing about this record is its elemental foursquare
structure -- clarinet over tuba, banjo with drums -- as basic
as trad jazz gets.
A-

Mary Lou Williams: A Grand Night for Swinging (1976 [2008],
High Note):
Got her start playing church organ on her mama's
lap. Turned pro at age 6, and hit the road at 12. Cut her first records
at 17 in 1927, really making her mark in the 1930s as pianist-arranger
for Andy Kirk's Kansas City big band, going on to write extended works
like The Zodiac Suite. Picked up bebop almost as naturally as
she took to swing, and after a long hiatus reappeared in the 1970s as
the hippest old lady in the business. This is just a live set caught
in Buffalo, her trio mostly playing covers, a nice showoff spot for
drummer Roy Haynes, the title cut reprised. It's all dazzlingly alive,
spirit-lifting -- maybe all that praying paid off. Ends with a bit of
interview, you won't mind hearing more than once.
A-

Music Week

Music: Current count 14842 [14827] rated (+15), 744 [731] unrated (+13).
For music purposes, the week ended midway, when the carpet people came and
screwed up our back room. Then Jerry Stewart showed up to start working on
house. The first half was productive enough, but the second a total wipeout.
The next few weeks will be more like the last half of this one, so don't
expect much.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #18, Part 6)

Jazz Consumer Guide (#17) will run this week, meaning Wednesday.
I've done quite a bit of work on the next one, but I'm pretty much
stalled right now. Did manage a bit of prospecting early in the week,
but nothing last 3-4 days. In fact, I've just been playing things for
pleasure, and to show off to my house guest. Right now that means
Lefty Frizzell. Don't expect I'll be writing much in the next 6-8
weeks. I started a short thing on the anniversary of 9/11, but didn't
manage to wrap it up. Didn't even manage to publish the book notes
I have backlogged. But I did frame together a new CD cabinet that I
figure will hold another 800 CDs, so I'm making progress on other
(non-writing) fronts. That's important, too.

Lee Konitz and Minsarah: Deep Lee (2007 [2008],
Enja): Konitz needs no introduction. He is past 80 now, still
active, still playing difficult music beautifully. Minsarah is
Florian Weber's piano trio, one of those groups named after
their first album. Jeff Denson plays bass, Ziv Ravitz drums.
Mostly Weber pieces, except for the title cut. Was too busy
to do anything more than enjoy the record. Will return to it.
[B+(***)]

Christian Howes: Heartfelt (2008, Resonance):
Violinist, b. 1972, Columbus, OH; now based in New York. Fourth
album since 1997. Small print notes: featuring Roger Kellaway.
Stick describes this as "beautiful, romantic jazz," and that
does seem to be what he's aiming for. When he adds viola things
can get icky, as on the first two cuts. Elsewhere he shows a
Grappelli influence, and pianist Kellaway earns his keep. Bennie
Goodman's "Opus Half" is relatively choice.
B

Toninho Horta: To Jobim With Love (2008, Resonance):
Banner across the bottom identifies this as belonging to an "Heirloom
Series." No recording date, but it's pitched as a 50th anniversary
celebration of bossa nova -- seems likely to be new. Horta plays
guitar and sings -- make that, plays guitar much better than he sings.
He takes nine songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim, adds three of his own,
plus a stray by Paulo Horta and Donato Donatti, and gives them what
must pass among the nouveaux riches as the luxury treatment. The
results are very mixed: wonderful, awful, permutations thereof. The
band is ridiculously large, with some prominent yanks -- Dave Kikoski
(piano), Bob Mintzer (tenor sax), Gary Peacock (acoustic bass), John
Clark (French horn), Charles Pillow (oboe) -- mixed in with comparable
Brazilians like Paulo Braga and Manolo Badrena and bunches of folks
I've never heard of, many surnamed Horta -- the five flutes give you
an idea. Then there's the 22-piece string section, a surefire recipe
for seasickness. And the backing vocals, another dozen. Gal Costa
even drops in for three cuts. Still, it can be very nice when they
keep it simple, especially when the tune is as irresistible as
"Desafinado."
B-

John Beasley: Letter to Herbie (2008, Resonance):
Pianist, b. 1960 in Louisiana. Toured with Miles Davis and Freddie
Hubbard in the 1980s, cut a couple of crossover albums on Windham
Hill, scratched out a living doing ad jingles and filmworks. Plays
Fender Rhodes and synth as well as piano. Mostly Hancock songs,
with two originals and one by Wayne Shorter. Christian McBride,
Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Roy Hargrove get their name on the front
cover as "featuring" while Steve Tavaglione, Michael O'Neill, and
Louis Conte don't. Emphasizes Hancock's hard bop side over his
fusion moves, which is probably for the best.
B+(*)

Mike Garson: Conversations With My Family (2006
[2008], Resonance, CD+DVD): No recording date for the CD, but the
DVD was shot May 7, 2006. Presumably there's some relationship,
but once again I didn't bother with the DVD. Garson rings a bell.
At the time I first heard it, I thought his piano solo in David
Bowie's "Aladdin Sane" was one of the most magnificent things I
had ever heard. Other than that I hadn't noticed him much. Turns
out that before Bowie he started out with Annette Peacock. He has
a dozen or so albums, starting with 1979's Avant Garson.
This has a lot of quasi-classical flourishes, especially when
accented by Christian Howes' violin -- three cuts, but I could
have sworn there were more strings. Claudio Roditti plays trumpet
and/or flugelhorn on two cuts; Lori Bell flute on one; Andreas
Öberg adds guitar on two. The titles are connected with short
interludes, another classical-ish touch. And the piano is rich
and florid -- not something I tend to like, but here I rather do.
B+(*)

William Parker Quartet: Petit Oiseau (2007 [2008],
AUM Fidelity): Too late to make it into JCG (#17), where Parker and
the alto saxophonist here, Rob Brown, both have pick hits. Just as
well, as this hasn't clicked for me yet -- unlike two previous albums
with the same lineup (O'Neal's Porch and Sound Unity),
or for that matter Raining on the Moon (which added vocalist
Lorena Conquest) and Corn Meal Dance (with Conquest and pianist
Eri Yamamoto). On the other hand, I haven't been convinced to give up,
either. It feels less avant, more composed through. The two horns --
Brown's alto sax and Lewis Barnes' trumpet -- rarely fly off on their
separate paths. The liner notes suggest that for once Parker is working
within the tradition, composing tributes to players like Tommy Flanagan
(or Tommy Turrentine, or Tommy Potter), mapping the Little Bird from
one of his tone poems back to Charlie Parker.
[B+(***)]

Paul Motian Trio 2000 + Two: Live at the Village Vanguard,
Vol. II (2006 [2008], Winter & Winter): Don't remember
Vol. 1 all that well, but it came out at about the same grade.
Motian is less of a time keeper than a time disrupter, and he never
lets this group settle down into a groove or open up into a jam. In
this trio Chris Potter gets abstract and choppy, not really his
style, but he handles it well enough. The third leg of the trio
is bassist Larry Grenadier. The plus two is pianist Masabumi Kikuchi
and either Greg Osby (alto sax) or Mat Manieri (viola).
B+(**)

Vince Mendoza: Blauklang (2007 [2008], ACT):
Mostly a composer-arranger, no playing credit here. Fifth album
since 1990, first since 1999. The bulk of the album is the six
movement "Blue Sounds," which closes the disc after five pieces --
two originals, one traditional, one each from Miles Davis and Gil
Evans. The record bears the WDR/The Cologne Broadcasts logo,
drawing on the Westdeutschen Rundfunks Köln big band, with a
few ringers thrown in: Nguyên Lê on guitar, Markus Stockhausen
on trumpet, Lars Danielsson on bass, Peter Erskine on drums. So,
basically, a big band, plus strings (String Quarter Red URG 4).
Has some nice moments, but runs too close to classical for my
taste.
B-

Peter Schärli Trio Feat. Ithamara Koorax: Obrigado Dom
Um Romão (2006 [2008], TCB): Schärli plays trumpet; was
born 1955; has at least 8 albums since 1986, including at least
one focusing on Brazilian music. Trio includes Markus Stalder
on guitar and Thomas Dürst on double bass. Koorax is a Brazilian
vocalist, b. 1965 in Rio de Janeiro, the daughter of Polish Jews
who fled Europe during WWII. Dom Um Romão was a famous Brazilian
percussionist, 1924-2005. One cut here incorporates a berimbau
solo Romão recorded in the 1990s. I suppose the lack of drums
in this tribute could signify his absence. Mostly slow Brazilian
tunes, two standards ("Love for Sale," "I Fall in Love Too Easily"),
a Schärli original, done with a lot of haunting, smokey atmosphere.
B+(**)

Bill Moring & Way Out East: Spaces in Time (2007
[2008], Owl Studios): Bassist-led "collective group" -- second album,
not counting the one Moring did with a Way Out West group. Post-hard
bop, with Jack Walrath on trumpet, Tim Armacost on sax, Steve Allee
on keyboard, Steve Johns on drums, all but Allee contributing a song
or two -- Ornette Coleman is the only cover. Especially good to hear
Walrath, who hasn't recorded much lately.
B+(*) [Oct. 7]

Mike & the Ravens: Noisy Boys! The Saxony Sessions
(2006-07 [2008], Zoho Roots): Rock band, led by vocalist Mike Brassard.
Group originally formed in 1962, but this, with same original members,
is their first album. Rocks OK, with a large blues component. Sounds
more advanced than 1962. More like 1968. In fact, sounds an awful lot
like Steppenwolf.
B

Harry Shearer: Songs of the Bushmen (2008, Courgette):
Eleven songs, one dedicated to Bush administration teamwork ("935
Lies"), the other ten to individuals, starting with Colin Powell's
"Smooth Moves" and ending with Donald Rumsfeld's "Stuff Happens" --
both song-and-dance numbers, more than a little jazzy. Some of the
adaptations are obvious -- "Wolf on the Run" for Paul Wolfowitz,
"Who Is Yoo?" for John Yoo, with Karl Rove's "Turd Blossom Special"
and "The Head of Alberto Gonzalez" the most effective. "Karen" (as
in Hughes) is a duet with a Bush-sounding character asking the
publicist whether they like us yet. The one that cuts deepest is
Condoleezza Rice's "Gym Buds," with Judith Owen singing and someone
named Beethoven contributing the melody.
[B+(***)]

Carla Bley and Her Remarkable Big Band: Appearing Nightly
(2006 [2008], Watt): Aside from daughter Karen Mantler on organ, a pretty
standard big band configuration: four trumpets, four trombones, five reeds,
piano, bass, drums. Half or more are well known names, mostly with lengthy
associations with Bley: Lew Soloff, Gary Valente, Wolfgang Pushnig, Andy
Sheppard, Julian Argüelles, Steve Swallow, Billy Drummond. The layering
is impeccable, and she make especially good use of the trombones.
B+(***)

The Stryker/Slagle Band: The Scene (2008, Zoho):
Fourth album under this name, although guitarist Dave Stryker and
alto saxophonist Steve Slagle appeared on each other's albums long
before their merger. Jay Anderson plays bass, Lewis Nash drums.
Joe Lovano joins in on four cuts, but he's mostly wasted on slow
and overly slick stuff. And then there's Slagle's characteristic
flute cut. On the other hand, the band's usual upbeat postbop is
pretty tasty.
B+(*)

Nik Payton and Bob Wilber: Swinging the Changes
(2007 [2008], Arbors): Payton plays tenor sax and clarinet. B. 1972,
Birmingham, England; studied at Leeds College of Music, and perhaps
more importantly under Wilber, who indulged his Sidney Bechet fetish.
Payton was a founder of the Charleston Chasers, and has toured with
the Pasadena Roof Orchestra and what's left of the Duke Ellington
Orchestra. One previous album, called In the Spirit of Swing.
Lives in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which may have something to do
with why there's a Jobim song here, but few albums lack one; in
any case, this is pretty straight swing, the only unusual point
the preponderance of originals -- 4 by Payton, 7 by Wilber. Group
is Payton's "regular London quartet" -- Richard Buskiewicz (piano),
Dave Green (bass), Steve Brown (drums). Wish I could say more, but
every time I hear something exceptional here I convince myself that
it's Wilber.
B+(*)

Ron Kalina and Jim Self: The Odd Couple (2006-07
[2008], Basset Hound): Kalina plays chromatic harmonica. Doesn't
seem to have much of a discography or history, but he looks rather
gray. Self plays tuba. He's been around a long time, with credits
going back to 1976 and seven or more albums since 1992. The group
is rounded out capably by Larry Koonse (guitar), Tom Warrington
(bass), and Joe La Barbera (drums). They play a couple of originals,
some standards, two Charlie Parker tunes, the Neal Hefti-composed
title TV theme. They make an odd buzz, and swing a little.
B+(*)

Darrell Katz/Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra: The Same
Thing (2006 [2008], Cadence Jazz): Katz is a composer/arranger --
no performance credits here. He's directed the Jazz Composers Alliance
Orchestra since 1985, through six albums plus three under his own name.
He seems to be based in Boston. Don't know much more. JCAO is a large,
ungainly group, leaning avant-garde. Three of Katz's five pieces here
are built around texts by Paula Tatarunis, with more/less political
overtones. They are sung/recited by Rebecca Shrimpton, in one of those
annoying operatic soprano voices, although the words are consistently
interesting, and the music does something for them. The sixth piece is
the Willie Dixon blues, "The Same Thing," sung by Mike Finnigan. It's
one of those standard pop pieces that take on new life when avant-gardists
keep the 4/4 and twist everything else. Not a record I'd feel like playing
often, but there's a lot in it.
B+(**)

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.

Seven Years and a Day

Note: Started writing this on 9/12, then got distracted. Since
then the US financial system has continued to implode, while the media
chortles that the silver lining of depression is lower gas prices, and
the worst major party presidential candidate since James Buchanan (at
least) continues to hold even or better in the polls.

In looking that his year's crop of 9/11 observations, it strikes me
that people make more of it than is deserved, and still miss some very
basic points.

Nations that respect the rights of all of their people, and
respect the independence of all other nations, are never targets of
terrorist violence. As 9/11 showed, the US was no such nation.

The only appropriate response to an act of terrorism is to
examine the history that provided the pretext, and to make amends to
render that pretext obsolete. The US did not do this, and nearly all
Americans to this day have no clear idea why Americans were attacked.
Even those Americans who recognize that the US projects imperial power
and significant hegemony far beyond our borders often fail to see any
connection to Americans being targeted by terrorists.

The actual US response, which was to attack and overthrow the
government of Afghanistan, was possible only because the US possessed
military capability far beyond any reasonable defensive needs. No
other nation could have lashed out like the US did because no other
nation had the wherewithal. (Given how Afghanistan worked out, the US
may not have had the capability either, but the Bush administration,
and most Americans, thought it did.)

The US reaction validated the terrorists' rationale. Had the
US responded within the procedures of international law, admitting
redress for just grievances, we would have shown the terrorists to
be mere criminals. Instead, we admitted their case and added to its
rationale.

The US reaction was predicated on two unexamined assumptions:
1) that the US has a right to police the world, without any sort of
checks and balances; and 2) that when US authority was challenged
the only possible response was to reassert that authority even more
emphatically, which given the US military fetish meant more violently.
Given that violence is the most readily understood form of injustice,
we've only added to the store of rationales that terrorists use to
target us.

As America's knee-jerk violence increased it has exposed the
limits of American power, especially how incompetent the US is when
it comes to dominating and controlling people beyond US borders,
language, and culture. These failures exposed first the hollowness
of the superpower conceit and ultimately the viability of the whole
imperial venture.

The ideology that underlies the US response to 9/11 is so
pervasive that any administration would likely have struck out the
same way, but the Bush administration, with its deep conservative
faith in power and private wealth, its corruption and cronyism,
its inability to conceive of government ever contributing to any
sort of public interest, has been especially disastrous. The full
extent of Bush's failure will take many years to reckon, and will
be hard for most people to fathom. We are buried in debt, because
we have lived the last few decades on the illusion that the rich
are responsible for wealth, rather than merely the recipients of
political favoritism. We are increasingly buried in ignorance --
a stance that becomes all the more precarious in a technological
society on the cutting edge of resource and complexity limits.
We have, for instance, seen such unthinkable things as more and
more people sinking below the poverty line, and life expectancy
shrinking.

The latter paragraph could go on and on, but let's go back to
the initial point and underline it: the initial US reaction to
9/11 was very peculiar, an irrational burst of violence that was
predicated on self-delusion. No other nation in the world would
have reacted in that way, yet to us it still seems as normal as
apple pie -- even after every step advancing the reaction has
proven to be an abject failure. Until we can get our minds around
this simple truth we will continue to blindly hurt ourselves and
everyone else around us, until we expire from our own failures.
It's happening, and it cannot be stopped until we face up to what
we have done. Unfortunately, our whole political system militates
against that sort of self-examination.

It is certainly true that some politicians are less blind and
less stupid and less deceitful and less arrogant than others, but
how can they be so and still sell optimism, which remains the coin
of the realm even as we slide into hell.

Browse Alert: Politics and Race

But I'll repeat what I've said before: The ultimate test of what
matters isn't one-off articles but campaign narratives. During the
2000 campaign, the press developed a narrative about Al Gore being
dishonest based almost entirely on things he didn't even say. During
the 2004 campaign, there was a narrative about John Kerry being a
flip-flopper. In 2008, a robust narrative exists about Barack Obama
being too aloof.

There were also narratives about George Bush being a regular guy,
and McCain being maverick moderate. The fact is that McCain's campaign
lies more than Gore ever did, and that McCain's flip-flopped more than
Kerry ever did. Aloof may not be the right word, but McCain could
hardly be more disconnected from the problems of the middle class,
let alone the poor. He's blinded both by ideology and by the company
he keeps -- indeed, by his own ten house, private plane lifestyle.

But the press narratives keep slanting one way. It's enough to
make you wonder who owns the media, but you only need to ask that
question to surmise the answer.

Billmon: The Future Belongs to We.
This runs through the demographic shifts that are pushing the white
Republican backlash ever further out on the plank. I don't think it's
anywhere near this simple, but the demographic shift has already had
an effect on how both parties contend for votes. Bush and Rove made
some (neither sincere nor effective) efforts to woo hispanic and even
black voters. McCain's making fewer gestures in that direction, most
likely because he wants as much racial backlash from Obama as possible.
But even there he needs to be careful, because the white race margin
is already thin, and more and more whites are willing to vote for a
black or hispanic. Wichita, which is still 65-70% non-hispanic white,
elected an hispanic mayor a few years back, then voted him out in
favor of a black. On the other hand, those were both conservative
candidates backed by business interests. Real progressives, even
white ones, have a much tougher time.

Andrew Hacker: Obama: The Price of Being Black.
One problem with the demographic shift Billmon wrote about how do you
turn raw population numbers into actual votes. Hacker reviews the
various ways blacks are still denied their right to vote.

The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a
decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must,
that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a
pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade?
Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that
is now the core feature of his campaign?

Probably more convincing coming from a conservative who believes
he has a soul. Less so from me, because I've seen through him longer.
For me the last straw broke in South Carolina in 2000 when McCain
declined to defend the stars and stripes, let alone the Party of
Lincoln. Sullivan's endorsement:

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not
have the character to be president of the United States. And that is
why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the
next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain -- no
one else -- has proved it.

FiveThirtyEight is now showing
McCain with a 0.8% popular vote lead, although the electoral vote still
gives Obama a very slim edge (1.8). They surmise that this is the full
extent of the Republican convention bounce. Looking at the state polls,
almost all of McCain's gain has come in red states -- topped by Alaska,
where the Palin pick has delivered a 31% margin in what had previously
been considered a competitive (although red-leaning) state. Sullivan
argues that the bump was in the "Christianist" base, which seems likely.
The last week has been exceptionally stupid even by usual Stupid Season
standards. Even things that should be hard news have turned to political
mush. For instance, Bush's announcement of a trivial drawdown in troop
strength in Iraq, albeit not until after his term ends. I keep seeing
endless repetition of the "surge has worked beyond our wildest dreams"
mantra by people with no idea what "working" means. (I believe the quote
was from Obama, of all people, but don't quote me on that.) Meanwhile,
the situation in Pakistan keeps getting further and further out of hand,
which is all the more worrisome given that both candidates are hawks on
it. It's tempting to say that Obama is losing because he's drifting away
from the right positions on critical issues of war and peace. But to the
extent that he is losing, it's for far worse reasons: because more/less
half of the American people, and considerably larger slice of the media
and business powers, are still willing to snuggle up in Karl Rove's
pocket. What it says about us as a nation is nothing less than shameful.

The Family

Robert Christgau on America's Secret Fundamentalists.
Book review of Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism
at the Heart of American Power. The subject is a group of politically
engaged Christians who predate and are more influential than the likes of
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Christgau writes:

Sharlet establishes that since the end of World War II, The Family,
aka The Fellowship, has exerted its influence in an impressive and
frightening array of mostly dire events. Its first coup was the
wholesale exoneration of minor Nazis and major Nazi collaborators
after the war. The addition of under God to the Pledge of
Allegiance and In God We Trust to U.S. currency were its
initiatives. Its first major government operative was Sen. Frank
Carlson, R-Kan., who persuaded Dwight Eisenhower to run as a
Republican, purged progressive bureaucrats from his chair at the
obscure Civil Service Employees Committee and lobbied for such heads
of state as Haiti's "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Other dictators abetted by
The Family included Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Haile Selassie of
Ethiopia, Park Chung Hee of South Korea, Artur da Costa e Silva of
Brazil, Gen. Suharto of Indonesia, Mohamed Siad Barre of Somalia and
Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova of El Salvador, which got its first
infusion of special aid at the behest of Jimmy Carter, who has called
Family leader Doug Coe a "very important person" in his life. Hillary
Clinton has also been a Family "friend," and not just via its major
public manifestation, the relatively anodyne annual National Prayer
Breakfast. The Family was instrumental in the creation of Chuck
Colson's Prison Fellowship, and of the Community Bible Study project
through which George W. Bush found Jesus in 1985.

Who are the people in this Family?

Yet you won't meet the usual cast of hucksters and theocrats --
James Dobson, Tony Perkins, John Hagee, Rick Warren, Tim LaHaye,
whoever. A few politicians pass through, notably Sam Brownback, but
for the most part you've never heard of these rather colorless people,
every one of whom Sharlet engages on a human level. This failure to
flatter stereotype couldn't have helped Sharlet get reviewed and
typifies his insight into American Christianity, which subdivides
endlessly. The most important such grouping, argues
Gallup-pollster-turned-Rice-University-sociologist D. Michael Lindsay
in Faith in the Halls of Power (a well-researched -- and widely
reviewed -- 2007 overview of American evangelicals whose "sympathetic
perspective" Sharlet notes with some asperity), pits populists against
cosmopolitans. The populists have become familiar figures in secular
humanist folklore. The Family -- which is neither an official
organization nor a coherent conspiracy -- enlists only cosmopolitans.

Music Week

Music: Current count 14827 [14785] rated (+42), 731 [750] unrated (-19).
Got the big rated count by listening to a lot of stuff on Rhapsody. The
difference between rated and unrated is about how much I got from Rhapsody.
The unrated count doesn't reflect the week's meager haul, which I don't
have catalogued yet.

Black Bonzo: Sound of the Apocalypse (2007, The
Laser's Edge): More prog rock than heavy metal, although the lead
singer (Magnus Lindgren) has the lungs for the latter. Another
record on the shelf for a long time.
C-

The Black Keys: Magic Potion (2006, Nonesuch):
Rock band, singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach, drummer Patrick Carney.
Fourth album; a fifth one is out now. Previous two albums came
out on blues label Fat Possum. Nonesuch tends toward idiosyncratic
singer-songwriters, world, jazz, and Kronos Quartet, so this very
ordinary-sounding band is an oddity there. AMG lists them as Punk
Blues/Garage Punk, but most of what I hear is classic rock.
B

The Black Keys: Attack and Release (2008, Nonesuch):
Big news here is that the album was produced by Danger Mouse, which
screw up the blues-rock riffs, but doesn't add much.
B-

Miles Davis Quintet: Live at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival
(1963 [2007], MJF): Early into the second great Davis Quintet, with
Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams on board, along with
George Coleman on tenor sax; compared to the live albums from 1964,
this seems tentative and thin, reworking old repertoire, with a few
hints of the future.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Dizzy Gillespie: Live at the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival
(1965 [2007], MJF); Small group with James Moody (flute, tenor sax),
Kenny Barron (piano), and Big Black (congas), running through a mixed
bag of bebop, with the calypso "Poor Joe" thrown in for Gillespie's
vocal; sound is a little thin, and it's all very slapdash, not least
the comedy.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Thelonious Monk: Live at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival
(1964 [2007], MJF): Four terrific quartet tracks, with tenor saxophonist
Charlie Rouse in splendid form, and the pianist especially delightful on
"Bright Mississippi" -- a Monkified "Sweet Georgia Brown"; five extra
horns show up for the Buddy Collette-sketched encores, with hot boppish
trumpet and more funky piano.
A- [Rhapsody]

Jazz Prospecting (CG #18, Part 5)

Another weird week for me. I fumbled for a couple of days getting
nowhere, then started pulling long-sitting probable junk from the
shelves (some, but by no means all, below), then spent a few days
playing Rhapsody, and finally settled into some serious jazz. The
Rhapsody stuff will show up in a later post -- I've never been a
fan, but the Conor Oberst album is pretty good, and Jeffrey
Lewis's 12 Crass Songs is a weird, left-wing find. No more
info on when Jazz CG (#17) runs, although it shouldn't be too long
now.

One thing I'll note here is that I'm going to be cutting back
on writing, especially about music, over the next 6-8 weeks. I'm
not discontinuing anything, but everything will be sparser and
slower. I have another trip to Detroit lined up, and I have a
bunch of construction projects, both here and there, on my plate.
This is the best time to get them done, and I'm finally taking
that plunge. All year long -- in fact for several years now --
I've been tethered to the computer, listening to as much stuff
as I could handle, writing as much as I can, letting pretty much
everything else slip into entropy's clutches.

I will be listening to stuff, and I'll write notes when I
can. They'll probably be more slapdash then usual, with more
records put back for later listening. If I have 6+ I'll put
up a Jazz Prospecting post. I have a little over 1000 words
written for Jazz CG (#18), and that will get a boost when the
cuts for (#17) come in. So it shouldn't be hard to finish this
off in a timely fashion. September Recycled Goods is already
thick enough to run. No reason to stop sending me new stuff.
This period will pass, then (most likely) we'll be back to
normal.

The non-music parts of the blog/website will continue in
a similar mode. I have some book stuff more/less ready to go.
The cutback means I'll put less work into finishing them off,
but the posts will continue. Don't know about the politics.
I'm somewhat inclined to pull my head down and let whatever
happens in the next two months -- Matt Taibbi's memorable
term for the 2004 election was "The Stupid Season," and that
seems likely to be the case once again. But I doubt that I
won't be tempted to write something, no matter how distracted
I am. We'll see.

Renaud Garcia-Fons Trio: Arcoluz (2005 [2008],
Enja/Justin Time, CD+DVD): French bassist, b. 1962, uses an unusual
5-string double bass, has a technique of tapping strings with the
bow. The fifth string gives him something like cello range. Trio
includes Kiko Ruiz on "flamenco guitar" and Negrito Transante on
drums/percussion. Music draws on flamenco, and reminded me more
than a bit of tango. Garcia-Fons has six albums on Enja, at least
two picked up by Justin Time. DVD adds visuals to the same concert.
I played it but didn't watch much.
B+(**)

Randy Sandke: Unconventional Wisdom (2008, Arbors):
Trumpeter, mostly plays old-fashioned mainstream, or what you might
call swing-bop, but sometimes will surprise you. This quartet, with
Howard Alden (guitar), Nicki Parrott (bass), and John Riley (drums),
should steer to the retro side, but doesn't. I'm not really sure
what they're doing, other than framing a lot of gorgeous trumpet
balladry. Parrott also sings four songs. She has a plain, slightly
hesitant voice, which I think works very well.
[B+(**)]

The Pineapple Thief: Tightly Unwound (2008, K
Scope): English ("Somerset-based") rock group, led by guitarist
Bruce Soord, has half a dozen albums since 1999. Sounds a little
like Jesus and Mary Chain minus the fuzz -- didn't catch any
lyrics, so I can't speak to the gloom. Better than average for
what they do, but no real business being here.
B+(*)

Tuner: Totem (2005 [2008], Unsung): Another
rock record slipped into the stack. Quasi-industrial, chompy
hard beats, fuzz guitar, more instrumental than not, with
long stairstepped segues and some chant-like but ignorable
vocals. "Dexter Ward," with its long instrumental outro, is
a good example.
B+(**)

Tuner: Pole (2005-06 [2007], Unsung): Not
background; just an earlier record I shelved and didn't bother
with. Group is duo with Markus Reuter on guitars (mostly) and
Pat Mastelotto on drums (mostly), with nine guests listed.
Like the quasi-industrial instrumentals; don't like the cult
doom-and-gloom vocals -- the talkie ones aren't so bad, but
the whispery ones are just creepy.
B

Judith Owen: Mopping Up Karma (2008, Couragette):
British (or should I say Welsh?) singer-songwriter, with eight
(or more) records since 1996. I don't hear her as a jazz singer,
and don't find her very interesting as a rock or cabaret singer.
At least this has fewer annoying vocal tics than the previous
album I've heard (Happy This Way), and the strings and
such are fairly inocuous.
B-

Anne Phillips: Ballet Time (2008, Conawago):
Singer, definitely jazz, all the way down to writing vocalese
lyrics -- her take on Dexter Gordon's "Fried Bananas" goes so
far as to explain how she wound up writing a lyric to "Fried
Bananas." Reportedly got her start "as a member of the Ray
Charles Singers on the Perry Como Show." Cut an album in 1959
called "Born to Be Blue," then followed it up with a second
album in 2001. This looks to be her third, not counting her
choir arrangements for the Anne Phillips Singers. This one
calls in a lot of chits, arranging 15 songs as duos with 15
musicians -- mostly pianists (notably Dave Brubeck, Marian
McPartland, Roger Kellaway), two guitarists (John Hart, Paul
Meyers), two saxes (Scott Robinson on baritone, Bob Kindred
on tenor), and Joe Locke on vibes. Two pianists sing duets:
Bob Dorough and Matt Perri. Five songs have music or lyric
(not both) by Phillips. The others lean on her guests, or
the Gershwins. The minimal pairings and juxtapositions make
for a very mixed bag -- tricks and oddities that never get
a chance to jell into something genuinely idiosyncratic.
B

Dave Pietro: The Chakra Suite (2007 [2008], Challenge):
Saxophonist, alto is probably his main instrument, although he lists
it third here, ahead of C-melody but after soprano and F-mezzo. Born
in Massachusetts, studied at UNT, played 1994-2003 in Toshiko Akiyoshi's
big band, and many of his other credits are in big bands -- Mike Holober,
Pete McGuinness, Jim Widner, Gotham Wind Symphony. Sixth album since 1996,
including some Brazilian experiments and a Stevie Wonder tribute. This
one is based on Indian themes, but also includes Brazilian elements.
Todd Isler taps both sources for percussion. Rez Abbasi plays sitar as
well as guitar. Gary Versace plays accordion and piano. The light sax
floats and dances over intriguing rhythms and subtle mood pieces.
B+(***)

Michael Bates: Clockwise (2008, Greenleaf Music):
Bassist, composer, grew up in Canada, played in hardcore and punk
bands before settling into jazz. Has three albums, some attributed
to Michael Bates' Outside Sources, although Bates is the only one
on all three albums. (Actually, my copy, with no mention of Outside
Sources, has a different cover from the one shown on the band's
website and Myspace page. The label's website shows my cover.)
Pianoless quartet this time, with Russ Johnson on trumpet, Quinsin
Nachoff on sax or clarinet, and Jeff Davis on drums. It's worth
the trouble trying to focus on bass/drums, which provide the
foundation for all the free-flying sparks.
B+(***) [Sept. 8]

Rabih Abou-Khalil: Em Português (2007 [2008], Enja):
It looks like the German label Enja finally has a US distributor
(Allegro), so we may start seeing their records in a more timely
and complete fashion. (For the last several years they've had a
deal where Justin Time selectively reissued their records.) Enja
has been home to Lebanese oud player Abou-Khalil since 1988, with
at least 10 records. They've all had very distinctive packaging:
cardboard foldout cases with metallic ink. This one, with its
purple background and jeweled fishes, is a beauty. Abou-Khalil
started with his native Arabic music, which flows readily into
jazz due to their joint emphasis on improvisation, but over the
years he's moved fluidly through the realms of European folk
musics -- Morton's Foot (2004) is an especially good
example. Here he goes whole hog into Portugal, setting out an
album totally dominated by Ricardo Ribeiro's vocals. I would
have preferred more instrumental space, maybe a horn beyond
Michel Godard's occasional tuba. The best thing here is the
way the oud weaves through the whole tapestry.
B+(**)

Ralph Lalama Quartet: Energy Fields (2008, Mighty
Quinn): Mainstream tenor saxophonist, b. 1951, cut five albums for
Criss Cross 1990-99. This is his first album in the new millennium,
a quartet, with John Hart's guitar a significant complement for the
sax. Mostly covers (1 original), standards and bop tunes from Parker,
Shorter, and Shaw. I'm not familiar with his early work. This is
beautifully done, but seems like something he could fall back on
any day he wanted.
B+(**) [Oct. 1]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further
listening the first time around.

Downbeat Critics Poll: 2008

Browse Alert: NY Times

Sarah Vowell: Party Guy.
One of the maddening things about presidential campaigns is the near
certain knowledge that you'll never fully anticipate what you'll get
once a candidate is elected. Moreover, the risks of those bets keep
increasing, as the executive branch concentrates more and more power,
especially the power to bull into insane, hapless wars. As Vowell
points out, this is nothing new.

Former Senator Fred Thompson, in his folksy and entertaining speech
at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, described his
party's presidential nominee as such a rule-breaking scamp that for a
minute there I thought he was nominating Tom Sawyer for president
instead of John McCain. When Mr. Thompson described Senator McCain's
progression from Naval Academy cut-up to war hero, all I could think
about was a ne'er-do-well West Point cadet bound for military
distinction, Ulysses S. Grant.

In the 1868 presidential election, when the American people voted
for Grant, the greatest war hero of the 19th century, they had no
inkling they had just chosen one of our worst presidents, a largely
clueless chief executive who allowed corruption to flourish in his
administration and who offered pretty much zero leadership during the
depression known as the Panic of 1873.

Another example:

Senator McCain has been both lauded and derided as a "gambler" for
choosing the obscure governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running
mate. That's nothing compared to the sucker bet the American people
are forced to make every four years. For instance, who knew that
Herbert Hoover, who had been such a heroic do-gooder for the Belgians
during their food crisis of 1914, would turn out to be a president
blatantly blasé about Americans who were starving during the Great
Depression?

Then there was George W. Bush, the guy who wanted America to
assume a more modest foreign policy:

One of my biggest fears about the current president back in January
2001 was that he would fail to make good on his campaign promise to
eliminate the National Park Service's $4.9 billion deferred
maintenance backlog. Seven years later, the nicest way I can describe
how things turned out is that the park service backlog -- now around
$8 billion, by the way -- is no longer one of my top 50 anxieties
about the state of the union.

With Bush we might have been able to read the tea leaves a bit
more carefully, especially if the media, or for that matter Bush's
opponent, had bothered to ask some tough questions. There's plenty
of reason to suspect the worst from McCain, but he still gets a
pass from way too many people.

Despite his consistent party-line voting record, some independents
and Democrats still think of Senator McCain as the most palatable,
independent-minded Republican. But this is the sort of empty
compliment a friend of mine once compared to being called "the coolest
Osmond."

Senator McCain's name will not appear on ballots under the category
"Maverick." A vote for him is a vote for the Republican Party, which
is to say the people who were standing there on the floor in Minnesota
all week long chanting, "Drill, baby, drill," or rattling maracas to
cheer on Mitt Romney as he bragged, "Just like you, there's never been
a day when I was not proud to be an American." Really? Not even on Abu
Ghraib thumbs-up photo day? Or Superdome bedlam day(s)?

A persistent theme in Republican attacks against Obama is that
you [the voter] don't know what he'll do once he gets into power.
All you can tell now is that he says now, but most likely he's just
saying that to get you to vote for him, so he can get into power
and do whatever it is he really wants to do, whatever that is --
surely something awful bad. Like many effective smears, this is
based on a half-truth, which is that nobody ever knows how the
future is going to play out. On the other hand, the Republicans
have bound themselves together so tightly that their range, for
any semi-loyal party guy, looks to be limited to continuing the
slow decay as we deny all the problems that are accumulating to
driving full-speed into one disaster after another. At least
with Obama we have a guy who says he can see potholes and seems
to be smart enough and attentive enough to occasionally hit the
brakes and/or swerve out of the way (or, as the derogatory term
puts it, "change course").

There are few things in life I hate more than betting, but
this one seems pretty clear cut.

The last page of the New York Times Week in Review section
was filled by a full-page ad for Thomas L. Friedman's new book,
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution --
and How It Can Renew America. Looking forward to the Matt
Taibbi review. (For last time, see
here.) For a
whiff, see Friedman's op-ed today ("Georgia on My Mind"). Last
two paragraphs:

Alas, though, the Republicans just had a convention where abortion
got vastly more attention than innovation, calls to buttress Tbilisi,
Georgia, swamped any for Atlanta, Georgia, and "drill, baby, drill"
was chanted instead of "innovate, baby, innovate."

If we were serious about weakening Putin and Putinism, we would be
investing $1 billion in Georgia Tech to invent alternatives to oil --
the high price of which is the only reason the Kremlin is strong
enough today to bully its neighbors and its own people.

There are almost ten serious errors in those two sentences -- a
really remarkable density of denseness. About the only thing he did
get right is that the Republicans are morons, but how tough a call
is that? The idea that innovation is the answer to all our problems
is cornucopian gospel, something the Republicans are quite happy with,
even if they'd preface it by claiming that the way to innovate is
to stop taxing businesses and profits, as opposed to, like, public
investment in education and science. And we're not serious about
stopping Putin/Putinism -- we need the enemies to keep us focused
on guns (not butter). The oil business has been good to Russia, but
Russia's a global power because they're a big country with lots of
smart people -- at least if you consider figuring out how to blow
up half the earth a sign of brains. They've been called "Upper Volta
with missiles," but that doesn't mean that if you'd just (somehow)
take away the missiles they'd just be Upper Volta. Moreover, even
if you wanted to take away their oil business, you can't, for the
simple reason that they got the oil and you don't. Nor is a paltry
$1 billion investment anywhere going to invent "an alternative to
oil" -- let alone Georgia Tech, who'd probably plow it into football
anyway. And so on. Nobody else manages to turn gibberish into cliché
more efficiently than Friedman.

Elmer Gantry to the Rescue

I've reprinted several Wichita Eagle editorial cartoons by Richard
Clawson. He's usually pretty mild-mannered, but occasionally he does
get worked up and draws something interesting. But the following one
took me aback. Palin, of course, doesn't have a reform message, let
alone a reform record. Even if she did, by signing on as John McCain's
running mate she's subordinated whatever she might want to whatever
McCain wants -- which is hard to speculate on because McCain himself
has given up any hint of unorthodoxy in his quest to become George W.
Bush's successor. The next time you'll hear McCain espousing anything
remotely resembling reform will be the next time he gets caught red
handed, like he did in the Great Savings & Loan Swindle.

Then there's the hockey stick grafted onto a baseball metaphor.
I'm not sure how to read that, and I doubt that Crowson knows either.
Hockey isn't a sport we Kansas know much about, but I was under the
impression that slapping the puck out of the rink wasn't as positive
an accomplishment as slugging the ball out of the park. In any case,
the elephant's exclamation rings false, and the donkey's confusion
has less to do with irony than flabbergasted disbelief. That point
is well taken. Palin's big convention speech consisted of nothing
more than dutifully reading the text of one of Bush's old writers,
following the choreography of Bush's pet Machiavellian, Karl Rove --
like Phil Gramm and so many others, part of McCain's maverick posse.

I think the cartoon appeared in Friday's paper -- not sure, because
the rain had reduced it to pulp by the time I got up. I noticed the
cartoon when I was trying to track down a letter to the editor,
written by Richard D. McKenzie, titled "Elmer Gantry II?":

Barack Obama came into our midst via Chicago, where he no doubt
picked up a few good tips on business and contacts useful for later in
life.

Armed with dubious credentials, a glib tongue and the ever-present
hand mike, he infiltrated one of our most respected political
parties. Sadly, its leadership succumbed to his spiel, which is
composed of many slogans, problems without solutions and "much blow
but very little go."

This brings to mind the widely read book that Sinclair Lewis wrote
about the classic flimflam man Elmer Gantry, who mesmerized his
gullible followers in order to feed his ravenous ego.

By contrast to Obama, Elmer Gantry was a mere beginner.

I've read a lot of weird attacks on Obama, but this one is so
far off the charts I'd suspect satire if it didn't seem even more
implausible than idiocy. It's downright weird on more levels than
I can calculate. I doubt that this "widely read" novel has been
read by as many of 0.02% of the letter's limited readership, so
for starters the writer is placing himself in a peculiar elite --
presumably with Obama, who is presumed to have taken the character
as a model. (Why is another whole level of weirdness.) I've never
read the book, nor for that matter anything else by Sinclair Lewis.
Wikipedia has a more coherent synopsis:

The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing
college athlete who, upon realizing the power, prestige, and easy
money that being an evangelical preacher can bring, pursues his
"religious" ambitions with relish, contributing to the downfall, even
death, of key people around him as the years pass. Gantry continues to
womanize, is often exposed as a fraud, and frequently faces a complete
downfall, yet he is never fully discredited and always manages to
emerge triumphant and reaching ever greater heights of social
standing.

That sounds a little bit like a lot of people, but Obama isn't
a name that jumps out for me. It's almost like McKenzie is running
through his encyclopedia looking for any kind of slime or slander
he can liken Obama to. The fact that this one is a book by an old
time left-leaning novelist satirizing rich and pious phonies, a
book long hated by the religious right, doesn't even produce any
cognitive dissonance. One wonders why Obama's critics so often
fall back on metaphors, allusions, and misrepresentations. It's
like they can't even bear to contemplate actual issues.

I've been saying all along that the Republican campaign is
going to get ugly, but it's starting to look it's just coming
unhinged. It's like the Republicans feel like they have this
God-given right to win and rule, and they just go crazy when
they lose -- it's just something they can't fathom. You got a
good look at that reaction when Clinton won in 1992. Clinton
more than met them half way, yet they couldn't just graciously
claim that even with Clinton in the White House they'd still
be getting more than half the loaf. Instead, they went on an
eight-year infantile rant. Now, after the sore losers spent
their eight-year return to power wrecking everything they
touched, they're bound to lose again, and this time not to
the sweetheart of the Republican Lite set; no, this time, to,
uh, Obama. They seem, thus far at least, to realize that going
all Jesse Helms isn't going to do the trick, so they're groping.
Elmer Gantry, anyone?

Browse Alert: Party People

Paul Krugman: The Resentment Strategy.
The first few paragraphs give you a sense of how far the convention
Republicans have gone to stir up resentment against the Democratic
ticket. There is, after all, little more than they can run on, but
it's also been in their blood, as far back as Richard Nixon, who
brought the Republicans back to power with his "silent majority"
coalition of big business, racists, militarists, and old-fashioned
individualists. The more they rule, the more they screw up; hence,
the more dependent they are on stoking the rage that brought them
together in the first place.

By selecting Barack Obama as their nominee, the Democrats may have
given Republicans an opening: the very qualities that inspire many
fervent Obama supporters -- the candidate's high-flown eloquence, his
coolness factor -- have also laid him open to a Nixonian
backlash. Unlike many observers, I wasn't surprised at the
effectiveness of the McCain "celebrity" ad. It didn't make much sense
intellectually, but it skillfully exploited the resentment some voters
feel toward Mr. Obama's star quality.

But the Republicans would be doing this to anyone. They can't,
after all, run on their own record.

Matthew Yglesias: A Partisan in Maverick's Clothing.
McCain still has two months to run away from the Republican Party,
but judging from the convention, he's stuck there, and couldn't get
far even if he wanted to. Yglesias points out many cases where McCain
has surrendered his independent judgment to the will of the party.
He could have gone further in exploring the extent to which the GOP
has become a hideous thought control machine.

Billmon: Really Proud.
While Krugman is still worrying about that the resentment campaign
may work against Obama, Billmon -- who on average is a hell of a
lot more critical of the Democrats -- takes some pride in what has
happened this year:

But there are loyalties that go deeper than policies, deeper than
ideas, deeper, even, than folly and cowardice. When I turn on the TV
and see the crowd at a Democratic National Convention -- black and
white and every shade in between, Anglo and Hispanic, gay and
straight, old and young, Jew and gentile, I know somewhere deep down
in my gut that those are my people, the Americans that I want to be my
fellow Americans.

That's a variant on what I've been feeling. I hate the very idea
of identity politics, but despite voluminous policy differences that's
what this election is coming down to: in part because that's the way
the Republicans want to fight it, but also because a lot of Democrats
this year don't feel like ducking that fight -- especially after seeing
the Republican convention.

Billmon: The Great White Hope.
A backgrounder on McCain, posted back on July 31 -- long time ago,
but as history it's still valid. Back in the 1980s, after he parlayed
his POW record into a Senate seat:

If John McCain had a problem with the way lobbying (i.e. legalized
prostitution) was being done in Washington, you definitely won't find
it in the record of the Keating investigation. McCain's fit of Puritan
self-righteousness (or political calculation, depending on your view)
came after the fact, once he'd already been caught. And yet, from that
single Senate speech sprang the shoot that eventually grew into the
sturdy tree of John McCain's media image.

You have to admit it was a neat trick: Happily accepting the
naughty goodies while they were being handed out, but then winning
brownie points for admitting he took them -- after the world had
already found out he took them. But that's precisely what McCain
did. He's never looked back since.

The lesson he learned, I think, is that pseudo-candor (truthiness)
usually trumps the genuine article (McCain was way ahead of his time
on this) And so he hasn't hesitated to flip and flop shamelessly if
(and these are the key points) it is in his interest and he thinks he
can get away with it.

On to 2000, when he ran for president:

As the outsider, one of a number of outsiders, running against the
GOP establishment favorite, McCain desperately needed -- and knew he
needed -- independents and Democrats to turn out for him in the
primaries where they were allowed to do so. But his record and his
positions on most issues defined him as a fairly conventional GOP
conservative -- what's more, one whose primary passion, national
security hawkishness, was way out of fashion. So, McCain and his
political advisors used his personal biography (not least his
post-Keating Five contrition) to fashion a new political persona that
would appeal to independents and/or moderates: McCain 2.0. To
demonstrate his bona fides, he even took a totally gratuitous (if
entirely accurate) public shot at the religious right, defining them
as "the agents of intolerance."

It worked well initially -- well enough to put the fear into Karl
Rove and George W. Bush, not to mention the entire GOP
establishment. But conservative, hardcore Republican South Carolina
turned into the make-or-break primary state, and McCain's supposed
appeal to veterans turned out to be much less tangible than the Bush
machine's tight connections to the fundamentalist Taliban. So suddenly
John McCain, the supposed straight talker, was ducking and weaving
around the perennially important issue of whether the Confederate flag
should continue to wave over the cradle of the Civil War.

He lost anyway, of course -- but here again, as during the Keating
Five scandal, McCain managed to make political vice look like virtue,
at least in the media's eyes. In late April, he gave a speech
announcing he'd been wrong not to denounce the Stars and Bars. "I
chose to compromise my principles," he confessed, and "broke my
promise to always tell the truth" in order to win in South
Carolina.

With Bush the nominee, McCain waited on the sidelines.

Like Achilles, McCain largely withdrew to his tent for the 2000
general election campaign -- sulking after his defeat, it was said;
although, in hindsight, hedging his bets might be a more accurate
description. But after the Florida debacle, with the Cheney
Administration off to a rocky start and Shrub looking like a possible
one-term failed nominal president, McCain re-emerged to re-define
himself legislatively as a "maverick" Republican -- opposing tax cuts,
slamming the tobacco lobby, embracing campaign finance reform,
etc.

But then 9/11 reshuffled the political cards once again. With Bush
transformed into the GOP's Maximum Leader, McCain reinvented himself
AGAIN as a loyal foot soldier in the war on terrorism -- but managed
to keep just enough daylight between himself and the Cheney
Administration (on the conduct of the war in Iraq, the use of torture,
etc.) to give himself an out if thing went South.

In 2004 McCain flirted with Kerry, but wound up embracing Bush.
He got back into the forefront of the neocon war in Iraq, surging
even before Bush did. And he started mending his fences with GOP
baseheads like Jerry Falwell. Through the primaries he was more
unapologetically aligned with Bush than any other candidate, even
though it meant backtracking on everything from taxes to Armageddon.
And now, with the nomination sewed up, all those GOP aparatchiks
who supposedly hated him in his "maverick" days are lined up right
behind him: the ultimate party hack.

The poll projections at
FiveThirtyEight have
Obama up by 3.1% today, his biggest lead that I can remember, with
Ohio and Virginia in the blue column, and Nevada teetering. Doesn't
seem like McCain got any convention bounce, but it may take a while
to work through the algorithms.

Browse Alert: Republicans

Billmon: In Your Heart, You Know They're White.
No surprise that the common denominator at the Republican convention
is that everywhere you look you see nothing but white faces. In 2004
Bush managed to engineer a little camouflage, but not McCain in 2008.
Not sure whether he forgot, didn't care, or couldn't hack it. He
might even see it as his leg up, but Billmon argues that all-white
crowds are looking increasingly anomalous in America. Tune in after,
say, the Olympics, the Democratic Convention, the Hurricane Gustav
evacuations, and the Republian convention looks even stranger, not
to mention more out of touch.

Paul Woodward commenting on a similar article in the Washington
Post: "How can a party that doesn't resemble the country, credibly
put the 'country first'?" Actually, the Republicans have a pretty
limited definition of country, one pretty much summed up by Todd
Snider's song "Conservative Christian, Right-Wing Republican,
Straight White American Males" -- plus a few soccer moms, or
hockey moms as the case may be. Their pitch is based on two basic
propositions: those are the only real Americans, and it's up to
the Republicans to protect those real Americans and their country
from all the other miscreants living and working hereabouts.
Everyone who doesn't fit their model is an object of fear and
loathing, and Republican campaigns are based on provoking as
much of that as possible.

Otherwise, the Republicans would have to run on their real
platform, which is helping the rich get richer and keeping
everyone else far excluded from any trace of political power.
You can start to see their problem when you start counting up
how many people benefit from Republican rule vs. how many are
hurt by it. If both camps acted rationally, the Republicans
would be hard pressed to get 5% of the vote. They do better
than that because they're able to con more people, and this
is an iterative process: they pick up a few people and tout
them as exemplars of Republicanism and use them as bait for
more. One problem with this is that the party keeps getting
dumber and dumberer as it's swelled with people who don't
know or appreciate their own or the public's interests.

But it's an argument that's losing out on several fronts,
including demographically. Matt Yglesias reacted to attacks
on Democrats in general and Obama in particular as being
elitists, in contrast to the regular folk Republicans claim
to be:

The only way to be a "regular person" is to (a) have white skin,
(b) not descend from Spanish-speaking people, (c) not go to college,
(d) not be poor, and (e) avoid living in a big city. Nevermind that a
large majority of the American public falls into one of the Five
Forbidden Categories of Irregularity.

The whole elitism complaint is the low point so far of this
campaign. It seems to be nothing more than a catch-all way to
strike out at Obama for being smarter and more eloquent than
McCain. Brains and eloquence used to be qualities that we sought
out in presidents, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and
Franklin Roosevelt. The Republican alternative to brains and
eloquence is ignorance and mendacity, and that's about all they
have left to sell. It's sad that anyone takes them seriously,
except as a threat to civilization.

Matt Yglesias: The Culture Warriors.
A little bit more on this, well worth reading. Although I said
above that most Republicans aren't being rational about their
interests, there is a broader niche that think they are, mostly
because they are doing pretty well and haven't factored all the
externalities in -- pollution, the risk shift, terrorism, gang
crime, government corruption and incompetence, etc. One thing
worth pondering is that while rich people in every state vote
Republican and poor people in every state vote Democratic, the
Democrats wind up winning virtually all of the relatively rich
states (Utah is the exception), with the Republicans winning
the relatively poor states.

Browse Alert: Palin

Stories are like diamond cutting. The interesting ones are
those that break into many facets each with its own distinctive
view of the story. The Georgia war was interesting less for what
happened to the poor people in the way than for how much tired
cold war ideology it revealed. The Joe Biden nomination wasn't
interesting at all: it was the ultimate safe choice, proven by
the fact that nobody (aside from Counterpunch) had anything to
say about it. In retrospect, it shows how cautious and methodical
Obama is, but only compared to McCain-Palin will anyone notice.
Anyone McCain could have picked would have reflected on McCain.
Lieberman would have been good for publicity, but he's been
pretty well aired out by now. I was hoping for Phil Gramm, but
he's pure coal compared to Palin: nothing but a source of heat
and pollution, sure to cover McCain in soot. Palin's much more
than that.

Brent D Wistrom: Brownback pulled as one to nominate Palin.
One of the most perverse things about the anti-abortion crowd
is how much they adore teenage pregnancies. For these people,
the news that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old unwed daughter is
pregnant is a sign from God. KS Sen. Sam Brownback is one of
them. He was originally asked to give Palin's nomination speech,
but evidently McCain's handlers started having second thoughts,
as if they recognize that most Americans might not be so joyful
over the Palin family's blessings.

Brownback said recent disclosures about Palin will only make her
stronger.

He said he thinks conservative Kansans will be supportive of Palin,
whose 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and not married.

"Here's a situation you don't like, you wish didn't happen, but you
don't kill the child as a response," he said. "You say 'OK, we'll have
the child, we're going to surround the child with love, they're going
to try to make it go as a family.' And that's what we do."

Brownback said, in fact, that Palin's social conservatism has
excited the base of the party for the first time in years. "After her
announcement, I talked to people who were giddy about her," he
said. "Because there's always been some distance between McCain and
the conservative base of the party."

Speaking of giddy, on the opinion page Cal Thomas has a love
letter to Palin, annointing her as a "Steel Magnolia." This is
actually a far cry from the usual run of Republican pundits, who
lined up dutifully behind Palin because those were the marching
orders.

So at least one part of the Palin pick is working beautifully,
perhaps too much so. The fundamentalist base is rallying behind
her, which is a double-sided sword. They got their candidate,
and -- unlike the Fred Barneses of the world -- they're going
to be hurt if McCain drops her. On the other hand, their fanatic
support only adds to McCain's already substantial nutjob factor.
When this finally sinks in, a lot of centrist voters are going
to be very nervous.

Perhaps I'm focusing on an irrelevant issue, but the presence, or
non-presence, of [Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol Palin's unborn
child] on the stage tonight strikes me as important. It's one thing
for delegates to be understanding and compassionate about the fix
these two teenagers have gotten themselves into. It's another to
actually celebrate it. And, given what we've learned in the last few
days, if Johnston is up on stage with his girlfriend and the Palin
family, and Republicans are wildly cheering, it will certainly look
like they are celebrating this situation.

I don't usually engage in these scenarios, but I'll do it here. If
the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant
by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared
onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering
wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of
dysfunctional black families.

Actually, if Palin was a Democrat and got nominated, virtually
everything in her story would spin around 180 degrees.

Marc Ambinder: What McCain Didn't Know About Sarah Palin.
Subtitle: "And why he probably would have picked her anyway."
Goes through in pretty substantial detail what McCain's people
actually did find out about Palin, and how they planned to use
that -- e.g., to turn the "lack of experience" issue around to
emphasize her executive experience as mayor and governor,
something Obama and Biden (and McCain) lack. The argument
that McCain would have picked Palin anyway depends more on the
mostly imaginary outisder-reformist narrative. That strikes me
as the weakest and most phony of her assets. She offers a sense
of human (as in fallible) commonness that McCain sorely lacks
(and that he sure wouldn't have picked up with Romney). On the
other hand, I'm not sure if that's what America wants in a
[vice] president.

Patrick J Buchanan: Johnny's got a new girl.
One thing we differ on here at home is Buchanan: whether he's an
incisive critic at least on a few points, or whether he's inevitably
just a partisan hack. Here's his take on Palin:

The Palin nomination could backfire, but it is hard to see how. She
has passed her first test, her introduction to the nation, with wit
and grace. And the Obama-Biden ticket, having already alienated
millions of women with the disrespecting of Hillary, is unlikely to
start attacking another woman whose sole offense is that she had just
been given the chance to break the glass ceiling at the national
level.

Her nomination, which will bring the Republican right home, also
frees up McCain to appeal to moderates and liberals, which has long
been his stock in trade.

With his selection of Sarah Palin, John McCain has not only shaken
up this election, he may have helped shape the future of the United
States -- and much for the better.

First, the Democratic base is bigger than the Republican base. The
number of self-identifying Democrats is substantially larger that the
number of Republican-identifiers.

Second, contrary to what we might have imagined earlier in the
year, Republicans have already been substantially more united behind
McCain than Democrats have been behind Obama. I would not have
predicted that. But the polls have been extremely consistent on this
point.

In other words, the GOP 'base' was already substantially
united behind McCain, subjective measures of intensity
notwithstanding. The people who will win the election for McCain are
disaffected Democrats and independents. In the context of 2008, a
juicing-the-base strategy is a recipe for a respectable defeat, not
victory.

I imagine there was a point where McCain fantasized that picking
Palin would have extended his reach: that he might have picked up
a big chunk of those Clinton PUMAs. In any case, he did succeed in
stealing the news cycle back from the Democrats. But the way Palin
is playing out may have just the opposite effect: rallying the
born-againers is more likely to unite the Democrats than to split
them. McCain may have figured he needed to gamble to win, or he
may just like gambling. Lots of Americans like gambling. They think
it's about winning, but mostly they just lose.

The question all this raises is whether they like leaders who
gamble. After two terms of George Bush doubling and redoubling his
failed, hedged bets, I hope not.

Browse Alert: Palin

Off the Rails: Sarah Palin's Very Bad Day.
That's the lead-in title. The link headline is "The Palin Meltdown in
Slo-Mo." I mostly wanted to use the picture, which unlike most quickie
photoshop kluges does a nice job of capturing this story. Palin reminds me
of randomocracy:
the half-baked idea that we can eliminate the biases in the election
system by simply picking someone at random. Compared to a political
process that promotes safe picks like Joe Biden (or steathily sinister
ones like Dick Cheney), Palin is almost a random American, at least
within Republican white middle class female constraints -- what proves
this is the ordinariness of her baggage. Even the corruption issues
are normal reactions to the company she keeps: as Molly Ivins used to
say, "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas."

Billmon: Ready, shoot, aim
On the art and science of vetting vice presidential nominees. One
point, which others have also made, bears repeating:

I'm glad to see Obama come out and warn his troops away from the
really personal stuff. It's already clear that Palin offers an
embarrassment of riches for the Obama campaign, and a wealth of
embarrassments for McCain's. There's no need to get greedy -- or cruel
and vindicative, which is the one thing that could cause this whole
freeding frenzy to circle back and start munching on the
Democrats. McCain's people wanted to toss the pregnancy story into
Hurricane Gustav? Good. Let it be buried in the muck.

Except for one obvious point: When Sarah Palin praises her
17-year-old daughter for "choosing" to give birth to a baby conceived
out of wedlock (and assures us that she is doing it of her own free
will) it should never be forgotten that she (and her party) would, if
they could, deny that same right of choice to every other American
woman, without exception.

That's why the important point about Palin's lack of experience
isn't about Palin. It's about McCain. And the question is not how his
choice of Palin might complicate his ability to use the "experience"
issue, or whether he will have to drop experience as an issue. It's
not even about the proper role of experience as an issue. In fact,
it's not about experience at all. It's about honesty. The question
should be whether McCain -- and all the other Republicans who have
been going on for months about Obama's dangerous lack of
foreign-policy experience -- ever meant a word of it.

The knock on Alaska's congressional representation shows a short
memory. Sen. Ernest Gruening voted against the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution. The only other senator to do so was Wayne Morse of
Oregon. Sen. Mike Gravel read the Pentagon Papers into the
Congressional Record. Of course, both were Democrats, and Alaska's
congressional delegation has been solid Republican for decades
now.

Gruening is long dead now, but Gravel ran for president this
year. He was probably the most solidly antiwar candidate in the race,
but didn't get any respect. Funny thing is that Palin seems to be
about as far off in the Republican fringe as Gravel is relative to the
Democrats. Had she run for president she wouldn't have fared any
better. Yet here she is, a heartbeat and the small matter of an
election away.

In the late 1960s I followed Congress real closely, and Gruening
was something of a hero to me. He was well into his 80s at the time,
having long been pre-statehood Alaska's most eminent statesman.
Gravel was his protégé and successor.

One of the amusing things about the Palin nomination is that on
matters like Iraq she seems to be closer to Ron Paul than she is to
McCain -- although, as we'll see, she can go any way the party wind
blows.

The folks at FiveThirtyEight have dropped their convention bounce
compensation metric, which had narrowed Obama's edge to 0.2%, but
kept various anti-trend hedge factors, so they're only showing Obama
with a 2.4% margin right now. (The average of six nationwide polls
today puts Obama ahead by 6.7%, with CNN +2% and everyone else +6-9%.)
That was good enough to barely nudge Virginia and Ohio into Obama's
column, but Nevada slipped out. It remains to be seen how much more
bump Obama can get out of the Republican convention. It all depends
on how many people are still gullible enough to believe anything
from a gang who'd say anything to hang on to the pursestrings.

Recycled Goods (56): August 2008

Still limping along with Recycled Goods here: 18 records this month,
with some more written but held back as insurance for September. I'm
augmenting what I normally get -- jazz and a small amount of world
music -- with Rhapsody downloads, which netted Bowie and the three
new Soundway Nigeria compilations this time. (And sent me back
to the shelves for my long-unrated copy of Nigeria 70.) These
are only noted in the subtlest way possible, but are, as usual, a
bit shakier than the other reviews. Soundway usually has pretty good
booklets, but I can't speak for these.

Music Week

Music: Current count 14785 [14751] rated (+34), 750 [746] unrated (+4).
Pretty hefty rating count. Not sure how I came up with it, other than
taking occasional breaks to sample new music from Rhapsody, which pays
off quickly. Some Recycled Goods, some Jazz Prospecting. Found a couple
of grades I hadn't noted, so those were really cheap.

Bill Frisell: Gone, Just Like a Train (1997 [1998],
Nonesuch): A trio like the East West records I've been enjoying,
but louder, less memorable.
B+

Nigeria Disco Funk Special: The Sound of Underground Lagos
Dancefloor 1974-79 (1974-79 [2008], Soundway): Long funk
instrumentals by long-forgotten obscurities -- T-Fire, Bongos
Ikwue, Dr. Adolf Ahanotu, the Sahara All Stars of Jos, you get
the idea -- some with superficial lyrics. Nothing special, but
they do keep it coming, the sine qua non of disco funk.
B+(*) [Rhapsody]

Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk
in 1970s Nigeria (1970s [2008], Soundway): When the
local riddims take charge, as on Original Wings' "Igba Alusi,"
you wonder why they ever settled for stodgy old rock grooves --
I mean, were they that impressed with Ginger Baker? More
groups I recognize, but mostly from similar comps; an admirable
piece of history, and it has its moments.
B+(**) [Rhapsody]

Putumayo Presents: African Party (1992-2008 [2008],
Putumayo World Music): Another mild-mannered afropop compilation,
drawing on recent records from artists who haven't made names for
themselves (at least over here) instead of surefire classic tracks
that remain equally unknown; starts in Guinea, moseys east and
south to wind up weighted toward South Africa; Louis Mhlanga's
"Rhumba All the Way" ties all these thread together.
B+(*)

Also added grades for remembered LPs from way back when:

Cluster & Eno (1977, Skyclad) B+

Eno/Moebius/Roedelius: After the Heat (1978, Skyclad)
B+

Jazz Prospecting (CG #18, Part 4)

Still in that limbo period working on new Jazz CG while the
previous one still hasn't been published. Sometime mid-September
is the expectation. Meanwhile, cruising through the incoming,
with occasional breaks for old stuff and new. Those are easier
than jazz, partly because I feel less pressure to write about
them, partly because they're just easier. The breaks did help
to fatten up the August Recycled Goods, which I'll post after
I write the intro. I've also been working on my by-now-annual
critique of the Downbeat Critics Poll, which I got to rather
late this year. I'll post that later this week.

Bill Frisell/Ron Carter/Paul Motian (2005 [2006],
Nonesuch): I was coming to think that Frisell was avoiding me
when I finally found the right contact and got not just his new
album but some back catalog. I'm never quite sure what I think
of Carter. Bass is an instrument you miss when it's not there,
but rarely listen to when it is. Carter's rep was established
by association with Miles Davis, but has been reinforced only
erratically since then. I've run across records where is sounds
wonderful, and others where it could have been anybody. He's
in between here. Motian is less distinctive than usual, but I
have no doubts as to his import here. His skill at shifting a
piano trio into slightly eccentric orbits is unmatched, so you
can figure he's a big part of the reason the leader's guitar
never slips into cliché. Ten songs: two Frisell originals, one
from Motian, one Carter co-write with Davis, two Monks, four
Americana standards -- one from Broadway, the others country.
Haven't sorted them all, but the last four are marvelous --
even the overdone, overly obvious "You Are My Sunshine."
[B+(***)]

Bill Frisell: East West (2003-04 [2005], Nonesuch,
2CD): Two live trio sets: one from the Village Vanguard (New York)
in December, 2003 with Tony Scherr (bass) and Kenny Wollesen (drums);
the other from Yoshi's (Oakland, CA) in May, 2004, with Wollesen
again and Viktor Krauss (bass). West mixes three Frisell
originals looped around strong rhythmic figures with three sly
covers -- "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "Shenandoah," "A
Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" -- for about as fine a demonstration of
Frisell's schtick as I've heard. East is more diverse, a
bit more obscure, and a little shakier, but again the familiar
tunes rendered as minimalist abstractions win out.
A-

New Guitar Summit: Shivers (2008, Stony Plain):
Three guitarists, none of whom strike me as new or novel or
whatever the implication is: Gerry Beaudoin, Jay Geils, Duke
Robillard. Actually, a fourth dinosaur shows up for two cuts:
Randy Bachman, sings too. They work around bass and drums.
Sweet sound. Not much action.
B

Brad Mehldau Trio: House on Hill (2002-05 [2006],
Nonesuch): Another background record. I had caught, liked, but
poorly remember, several early Mehldau albums, but none since 2001,
so I'm catching up. This is the same trio he worked with since
1993 or so: Larry Grenadier on bass, Jorge Rossy on drums. At a
high level, he strikes me as similar and comparable to Jarrett --
a bit less labored, or maybe he just makes it look easier, no
doubt a remarkable pianist. All originals. Mehldau's liner notes
run on at great length on how his art relates to Brahms and Bach,
maybe Monk too -- it's way over my head.
B+(***)

Metheny Mehldau Quartet (2005 [2007], Nonesuch):
Mehldau's trio, with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard having
replaced Jorge Rossy on drums, plus Metheny, who leans on his lyrical
side. Support is admirable, of course. I could see other folks liking
this a lot, but I just don't have much to say about it.
B+(**)

Bob Mover: It Amazes Me . . . (2006 [2008], Zoho):
Saxophonist, lists alto ahead of tenor, also sings, b. 1952, broke
in playing with Charles Mingus in 1973 and Chet Baker 1973-75. Cut
a few albums 1977-88, including two 1981 albums AMG likes on Xanadu.
(As far as I know the Xanadu catalog is out of print, but there were
some wonderful things on it -- Charles McPherson's Beautiful!
is one of my all-time most played records.) AMG lists one more in
1997, then this one; CDBaby describes this as his first in over 20
years. It's quiet storm: slow, smokey ballads, the rich, burnished
lustre of sax. Kenny Barron plays some of his best accompanist piano
since Stan Getz died. Mover sings on 6 of 10 songs. Voice reminded
me first of Sinatra, but without the chops. Technically, he's not
even as skilled as Baker, but doesn't have Baker's bathos, which is
what folks seem to love. Still, I find Mover's vocals touching.
B+(***) [Sept. 9]

François Carrier/Michel Lambert/Jean-Jacques Avenel:
Within (2007 [2008], Leo): Avenel is a French bassist,
best (or almost exclusively) known for his work with Steve Lacy
from 1975 on. He has one record under his own name, a world jazz
piece called Waraba, which I recommend highly. Reportedly,
he also plays sanza here (according to the booklet) or kalimba
(according to the label's website). Carrier plays alto and soprano
sax, mostly the former. He's released a number of records since
1998, mostly trios, virtually all with drummer Michel Lambert.
Three pieces here, the middle one called "Core" runs 40:18. Takes
a while to kick in, and requires more attention than I normally
muster, but I've always loved Carrier's sound, and find the
intricate free improv fascinating. [Note: Available on CD, but
also as a download for $6.49, a bump up from Leo's usual $5.49
price, probably reflecting the declining value of the dollar.
The downloads are available in OGG format, which sounds like a
good idea to me, but it wasn't easy to get them -- actually, I
just tried some of their 30-second samples -- to play on a MS
Windows machine. Wound up downloading and installing zipf and
firefox. One reason I thought of the download option is that
Carrier has a new 7-CD set available as download-only on Ayler
Records -- a label I regard highly, but haven't listened to
since they switched to download-only releases, figuring it's
all too much hassle. But I'm starting to be tempted.]
A-

Donny McCaslin Trio: Recommended Tools (2008,
Greenleaf Music): A tenor saxophonist who, it was immediately
obvious, has all the tools. Still, I always managed to resist
him, mostly because his fancy postbop harmonies rubbed me the
wrong way. I figured he'd eventually turn out an album that
simply blew away all my objections, and he still may. But for
now he just ducked under them, making a stripped down trio
album -- Hans Glawischnig on bass, Jonathan Blake on drums --
with a whole lot of sax appeal. It's like he's gotten over
following in Chris Potter's footsteps and instead aimed for
Sonny Rollins.
A-

Joe Lovano: Symphonica (2005 [2008], Blue Note):
You can probably figure this out by the title. If not, note that
while the WDR Big Band is a crack jazz outfit which works cheap
and occasionally pays dividends, the Rundfunk Orchester is a
classical outfit distinguished primarily by its massed strings.
The saxophonist is often magnificent, the effect heightened by
the swirling sea of indistinct sounds all around him. The latter
at least don't induce nausea, small comfort for symphonyphobes.
B+(**) [Sept. 2]

Hans-Joachim Roedelius/Tim Story: Inlandish (2008,
Gronland): Two synth players. Roedelius was part of the kraut rock
group Cluster (sometimes just a duo with Dieter Moebius) from 1970
on, also making a couple of 1977-78 ambient records with Brian Eno.
Story came along in 1981. He has a dozen or so records, mostly
filed under New Age (one was released on Windham Hill), although
there's not a lot of difference between the two. Non-swing ambient
pieces, the first one in particular ("As It Were") is especially
enchanting; the weaker tracks merely more inscrutable.
B+(**) [advance]

Bill Cantrall: Axiom (2007 [2008], Up Swing):
Trombonist, originally from New Jersey, educated in Chicago, based
in New York. First album. Composed 8 of 10 pieces. Group is a
septet: four horns (Ryan Kisor on trumpet, Sherman Irby on alto
sax, Stacy Dillard on tenor sax), piano (Rick Germanson, bass
and drums. Qualifies as postbop, tightly arranged, well played,
avoids common harmonic unpleasantries by leading with trombone.
B+(*)

Jorge Lima Barreto: Zul Zelub (2005 [2008], Clean
Feed): Portuguese pianist, b. 1949. I've seen a note that credits
him with several books and 16 records, mostly working through groups:
AnarBand (1972), Conceptual Music Association (Associaçao Música
Conceptual, with Carlos Zingaro, 1973), Telectu (with Vitor Rua,
since 1982). Also listed in a "classical composers database" --
good chance some of his work is classified as postclassical avant
whatever. AMG knows about three records (including one Telectu),
plust side credits with Raimundo Fagner, Derek Bailey, Carlos
Bechegas. This is solo piano plus sound effects. The 45:12 "Zul"
is accompanied by "radio SW" -- a source of common tuner sweep
noise. For the 30:10 "Zelub" he uses "4 cd players." The latter
are lower key and offer less contrast in a slightly slower, but
still remarkable, piece. The former is quite wonderful. The piano
as a brittle sound, something I associate with prepared pianos,
but there's nothing in the notes about that, and the effect is
less pronounced.
A-

Paulo Curado: The Bird, the Breeze and Mr. Filiano
(2006 [2008], Clean Feed): Portuguese alto saxophonist, also plays
a bit of flute (not bad, but a bit of a letdown). Don't have much
biographical info: discography starts 1999, with several appearances
in groups like Lisbon Improvisation Players, but most likely he goes
back further. Bruno Pedroso plays drums. The bassist, as you can
guess, is Ken Filiano, who does his usual superb job, around which
the free improvs spin and dance.
B+(**)

Angles: Every Woman Is a Tree (2007 [2008], Clean
Feed): Sextet, file under Swedish alto saxophonist Martin Küchen,
who wrote all the pieces, produced the album, wrote the liner notes,
etc. Group includes two more horns: Magnus Broo on trumpet, Mats
Äleklint on trombone. Also vibes (Mattias Ståhl), bass (Johan
Berthling), drums (Kjell Nordeson). Six pieces, titles reflect
war (or antiwar) themes. Takes a while to brew, but the mulitple
hornplay really takes charge in the third cut, "My world of mines,"
and the group rarely flags thereafter.
[B+(***)]

Trio Viriditas: Live at Vision Festival VI (2001
[2008], Clean Feed): Alfred Harth (aka A23H) on reeds, pocket trumpet
voice; Wilber Morris on bass; Kevin Norton on drums. Harth is a new
one to me. (Not really: I found one co-credit in my database, but it
didn't register in my memory.) AMG lists him under Opera with virtually
no info. Other sources show a discography going back to 1969, including
7 albums as Duo Goebbels/Harth (that would be keyboard player Heiner
Goebbels); collaborations with John Zorn, Peter Brötzmann, Lindsay
Cooper, Otomo Yoshihide; various groups, sample names: Just Music,
Duck and Cover, Vladimir Estragon, Gestalt et Jive, Imperial Hoot,
Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester (So-Called Left-Radical Brass
Band). He's usually identified as a multi-media artist. Morris and
Norton are, or should be, well known, at least in avant-jazz circles.
This starts up awkwardly, but settles into free jazz's alternative
equivalent of a groove. Not credited, but I could swear this ends
with a long quote from "On the Street Where You Live."
B+(**)

Patricia Barber: The Cole Porter Mix (2008, Blue
Note): Advance copy, had it a long time, played it a couple of times
in the car, and was itching to get along with it. First impression
was that Barber's down-and-out voice and demeanor was a poor match
for the supremely buoyant Porter. She literally tackles ten Porter
tunes, blocking them, wrassling them to the ground, rubbing dirt in
the wounds. They're slower and smokier than ever before. Neal Alger's
guitar is the dominant instrument, working the same vein, but five
songs have tenor sax solos which break the mold -- there's nothing
depressive about the way Chris Potter plays here. Three originals
thus far seem more for flow than competition. Looking forward to a
final copy.
[B+(***)] [advance, Sept. 16]

Marc McDonald: It Doesn't End Here (2007 [2008],
No End in Sight): Alto saxophonist, b. 1961, London, UK; has "led
groups for over 25 years in the New York/New Jersey area and such
cities as Honolulu, London and Athens." First album, although he
has a side credit from 1986, and a few more from 1998 on. Wrote
8 of 11 pieces, covering "Night and Day," "This Heart of Mine,"
and "Blue Skies." Piano-bass-drums quartet, with guitarist Steve
Cardenas guesting on 5 cuts. Very mainstream. I wondered at first
why he would bother, but it's clearly for the sheer beauty of the
music.
B+(**)

Judith Berkson: Lu-Lu (2006 [2008], Peacock):
Singer, based in Brooklyn, no more bio available. First record,
solo, plays piano/Wurlitzer. Four originals, five covers, 38:11
total, which is really quite enough. Slow and arty, with little
of special interest, although the closing "Some Enchanted Evening"
did something -- more haunted than enchanting, but something.
C+

Brian Cullman: All Fires the Fire (2008, Sunnyside):
Singer-songwriter, from New York, first album. AMG classifies him
as World, mostly based on liner notes he (presumably the same person)
wrote for albums by the likes of Ghazal, the Sabri Brothers, Hassan
Hakmoun, and Vernon Reid (who returns a blurb quote). Hype sheet
quotes someone likening him to Leonard Cohen, which isn't way off
base if you subtract about 95 years off Cohen's voice. Cullman has
a sweet, wry voice, with an effortless meander to the songs, and
something of a philosophical bent. "No God but God" gives me the
creeps.
B+(*)

Justin Time Records 25th Anniversary Collection
(1986-2007 [2008], Justin Time, 2CD): Canadian jazz label, with
some folk, blues, and world overtones. Got into the business in
1983 with pianist Oliver Jones; has a long list of jazz singers,
including the discovery of Diana Krall, and steady work by Jeri
Brown and Susie Arioli; scored their biggest coup in landing
David Murray in 1996, who led them to Billy Bang, D.D. Jackson,
and Hugh Ragin. Sidelines not documented here include their Just
A Memory archival series and reissues from Enja's catalog. All
this adds up to an eclectic sampler, with high points from great
albums and filler from weaker ones, unnecessary except to draw
attention to a label that's long been worth following.
B

Cryptogramophone Assemblage 1998-2008 (1998-2007
[2008], Cryptogramophone, 2CD+DVD): Another jazz label sampler,
founded by Jeff Gauthier to record a series of tributes to the
late Eric von Essen's music, moving on to document work by Alex
and Nels Cline, Mark Dresser, Bennie Maupin, Erik Friedlander,
Myra Melford, various others. A more useful reference than the
Justin Time sampler -- it covers a narrower band of music more
comprehensively, with better documentation -- but still a mere
sampler.
B

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Al Green: Lay It Down (2008, Blue Note): That he
always sounds so great turns out to be a handicap: it's such a given
that no matter how good his new records sound they'll never measure
up to the old great ones that it's easy to set them aside. Streamed
this first from Rhapsody, liked it, but hedged my bets. Since I got
a copy, I've played it maybe ten times. The songs hold up, notably
without any contribution from Jesus; the guests don't intrude, and
the singer is magnificent. Not Call Me or I'm Still in
Love With You or The Belle Album, of course, but I've
enjoyed this as much as anything recent, and have yet to feel any
need to go back.
A-